


Brilliant Lies

by starsandwristrockets



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Aged-Up Character(s), Angst, Chicago (City), Emotional Baggage, Gen, Minor Eleven | Jane Hopper/Mike Wheeler, Minor Jonathan Byers/Nancy Wheeler, Mystery, Original Character(s), Post S2, Post Season 2
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-23
Updated: 2019-12-12
Packaged: 2020-03-13 05:16:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 21
Words: 53,257
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18934198
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/starsandwristrockets/pseuds/starsandwristrockets
Summary: “Michael and Nancy and Jane were all part of something I hadn’t been—something big; I can sense it. They can say that it was nothing; that none of it mattered. But we, the Wheelers, are brilliant liars. It did.”Old secrets begin to resurface in 1997, but Holly Wheeler’s siblings are as stubborn as she is. Will she ever uncover the truth behind the lies?





	1. Introduction

 

_"_ _She's mad but she's magic. There is no lie in her fire."  
_ —Charles Bukowski

We are Wheelers

We are the conservatives from the end of the cul-de-sac.

We are willow-limed and white-smiled. We are strong-jawed, dimple-chined, and straight-shouldered. We wear our white collars pressed, our pearl earrings heirloom.

We are scholars, entrepreneurs, and athletes.

We do not mind if divorce tears this family into five. We do not mind if empty wine bottles feed the recycling, if child support checks feed the empty bank. We do not mind if infrequent visits replace a father, phone calls a brother, holiday cards a sister, apathy a mother.

We do not mind if all the children vanish.

We are Wheelers.

We are not accidents. We are not arsonists. We are not broken.

We are not a family burning to the ground.

We are Wheelers. And we are brilliant liars.


	2. Burnout

_INDIANA, 1997_

I.

A lie is only a story. And every story has some basis in reality. That's why when Coach Kelley asks me why the hell I'm so late to practice, I don't feel an ounce of remorse telling him, "Bathroom. Girl issues."

It is the kind of statement that begs no further questions. All Coach offers is a stiff, purse-lipped nod. "They're almost done with warmups. Stretch out and line up."

A familiar feeling warms through my chest. Victory.

Here's the thing about me: I always get what I want.

Which is the reason why, when I crouch on the track next to my fellow sprinters, I already know I have them all beat. I even toss a knowing smirk in the direction of Ryan, where he watches from the sidelines, arms crossed over his chest, the hollow at the base of this throat dewed with sweat. He, firm in the same belief, grins right back.

For me, it is never just practice. When Coach blows the whistle, I bolt. Let my legs take over, let my lungs move in time with my feet on the ground, let the sweet burn spread through the muscle of my thighs, across my abdomen, watch victory grow closer and closer as my strides pull me farther and farther ahead of my teammates.

That is until my lungs tighten in on themselves.

I am so close, but the air in my chest seizes, and I fall short. By the time Missy Allen crosses the finish line before me, I am in a full-out coughing fit.

"You okay, Baby?" she asks me.

I hunch over, choking for air. She places a hand on my shoulder, begins rubbing small circles into my upper back. I nod, breathless, and try to straighten myself.

Ryan jogs over, presses a half-empty water bottle into my hand. Other runners begin finishing their sprints and loitering around, their arms useless by their sides.

"Thanks," I manage, suppressing another round of coughs. The water is still a little cold and tastes like relief as it slides down my aching throat. I try my best not to drown.

"How many times have I told you to quit smoking?" he teases.

The corners of my lips curve up around the mouth of the bottle. Hypocrite.

" _And_ you missed warm-ups. Baby, no wonder your lungs are giving out."

I finish off the water, take long, even breaths. Mostly recovered now, but still, a residual cough shakes my chest.

"Everything okay?" He isn't just talking about my lungs anymore. "Did you and Summer actually…?"

And, as if on some sadistic cue, _"Holly Wheeler,"_ is barked down the track. Principal Murphy has materialized to beckon me.

She's been working fast, that Principal Murphy. I should've known.

I hand Ryan back his emptied bottle. "I'll call you."

"Yeah, if Karen doesn't kill you."

I begin to jog toward the front of the track, where Coach and Murphy stand, only this time I come up with a laugh instead of a choke.

II.

Maybe the decisions I made were stupid, but maybe I didn't care. Maybe, if I'm honest, it all feels a little worth it. A little exhilarating, even. No way I hell am I about to admit that to Murphy, though, and no way in hell do I feel any regret for not speaking this truth. Secrets are lies just the same.

Principal Murphy leads me straight into her office. Summer, following the vice principal, isn't far behind. "What's going on?" she asks the room, but this is a game we all play time and time again.

We set ourselves in our respective places on the board: Murphy sits tall with her hands folded over the desk and her burgundy mouth straight. Summer and I slouch in the itchy armchairs opposite. Vice Principal Gilson shuts the door on his way out.

The large desk takes up the majority of the space, made of laminate pattered to look like oak. On the shelves behind it live files and reference books and pictures of smiling families. There is one large window, looking out past the parking lot to the sports fields, where the distance runners begin their laps around the track. On the sill sits cards from former students—ones that ranked tops of their classes, I can guarantee. Framed on the wall is a master's degree from the University of Chicago.

I smirk to myself. Sure, we are playing on Murphy's board, but we have her outnumbered.

Regardless, we always hand her the first move. Offense. "I think we all know why I've called you in here today. Don't you, ladies?"

Summer and I express our right to remain silent. I take great interest in a loose thread on my gym shorts. We are good at this game.

Several uncomfortable moments stretch out before us until Murphy clears her throat and tries again. "Arson is a crime. As is the destruction of government property. The two of you could face jail time."

She's good at this game, too.

Summer picks up the defense. "I don't know what you're talking about."

"Your father is a police officer, Miss Kaine-Callahan. I trust you have some idea of the law."

"You're right. I _do_ know the law. And I know my rights. What I _don't_ know is why you're accusing us of—what did you say?— _arson?_ Sounds to me like I should be calling my lawyer." Summer really knows how to lay it on thick—five feet and two inches of mousy curls, sharp features, and shrewdness. But she sells it. She always sells it. "You don't have a single thing on us."

The desk drawer groans as Murphy opens it, reaching in and laying out a thin, silver tennis bracelet between us. My breath catches in my lungs again. I recognize it, its tiny crystals and janky clasp, immediately.

"I called your father, Miss Kaine-Callahan. He's on his way over now to confirm, but he says you have one exactly like it. Would you like to take a guess where it was found?"

Summer curses under her breath, fingers encircling her wrist where the bracelet should be. She doesn't let her guard stay down for long. Shoulders square, she insists, "Baby had nothing to do with this. It was all me."

What the hell is she doing? Under the desk, I kick her ankle—and not lightly. Summer hardly flinches.

Not that Murphy would have noticed either way. She busied her back in there drawer, producing two straightened bobby pins. Blonde. She sets them on the desk, leans over her elbows, and says in a low voice, "Let me ask you, Miss Wheeler: Did you or did you not use these to break into my office earlier today?"

Looking her dead in her inky eyes, I can't bring myself to say a word. How could we have been so _stupid?_

"That's breaking and entering." In that moment, all the truth in the world is held in Murphy's eyes. I can see it so clearly: she isn't angry with us. Whatever punishment is to come, it is not out of malice. Rather, she seems disheartened. She has spent the past three years trying to reign in Summer and me. Trying to help us. To set us on a good path, and it is only now that she realizes we are too far gone. Have been for a while now. She has nothing left to give us anymore. No guidance to offer. She has failed us as a mentor and an educator. As a principal and as a strong woman.

She swallows hard and sad and sits up straight again. "Lucky for you ladies, the fire stayed contained. No one got hurt; there was no lasting damage to the building. Not only that, but I still happen to see some potential in you two. So, on behalf of the school, the superintendent and I will not be pressing charges. However, I have no choice but to expel you both. Effective immediately."

 _"What?"_ Summer exclaimed, and my insides scream the same. "You can't do that!"

"The decision is final," says Murphy, exhausted. "You can appeal to the school board if you'd like."

"But… I thought you said the fire was contained."

"Frankly, Summer, my job is to ensure the safety of the rest of my students. With a record like yours—" She drones on, but I can't bring myself to keep listening.

Instead, I focus on the swirls of the desk's phony woodgrain. The upholstery of the seat scratches at the back of my bare thighs. The feeling of complete and utter defeat washes over my mind.

I know I should be retracing my steps—thinking about how exactly I let things get to this point—but the only answer I'll ever find is that this is precisely my own fault. No matter how many times I try to twist the story. To find a different basis in reality. To feed myself a lie.

III.

For as long as I can remember, my family has called me Baby Holly. How it has taken such widespread roots outside my immediate family, however, I can't be sure. Summer has that effect on people, I guess.

When we were young, Summer and I were cordial out of pure necessity. On Friday afternoons, Summer's mom would drop her off at the police station so she could spend the weekend with her father. Meanwhile, in his high school days, my older brother used this as an excuse to loiter around the station where his girlfriend was hired to shuffle papers. Much like my nickname, Jane has been around for as long as I can remember. I'm not exactly sure how they met, because Jane had always been homeschooled and Michael went through the traditional public education system, but that only meant he wanted to soak up as much time with her as he could after class. This lead to him sneaking visits to the station when he could and hauling me along with him. And I put up with it, because afterward he'd take me out for milkshakes.

Back in those days, Summer and I did not always play nice, which is why our newly discovered codependence came as such a shock to us in eighth grade. Summer was kicked out of her private Christian academy—something about incessant dress code violations and mouthing off to the nuns—and forced to move in with Phil, who could keep a better eye on her and start her up at Hawkins Middle.

Here's the thing about Summer Kaine-Callahan: she had always been the type of girl who is simply hypnotic; a phenomenon to which no one seemed immune. The type of girl to make a guy feel special, if only so he'd fetch her a Diet 7-Up. The type of girl who demanded respect, but offered others little. Have her walk into a room, and everyone sat up a little straighter. From the very moment she stepped into Hawkins Middle, everyone wanted to know her.

Everyone except me.

"She's a bitch," I told Serina Cole.

"Do you even know her?"

"I _knew_ her."

Serina frowned. "People change."

 _Not that much,_ I wanted to say but thought better of it. _Not people like Summer Kaine-Callahan._ And I was right. Summer _was_ a bitch. Always would be. But people could call her what they wanted, she never cared. She, and those closest to her, stood confidently in her truth. Only they got to see see how endlessly loyal she was.

Which is why when it came to choosing friends, she picked me. Marched right up to where I sat in seventh period pre-algebra, took one look at Preston Lee beside me, and asked to have his desk.

As always, she knew how to lay it on thick. Sold it as if she were embarrassed to be asking. "It's just that it's my first day here, and me and Baby Holly go _way_ back…"

"It's no problem," said Preston Lee, smiling bashfully, gathering his things, and moving back a row. And, God, was he even _blushing_ a bit? _Weak._

"You're a prince among men," Summer told him with her most dazzling grin. She dropped down in the seat next to me. "And _you._ I haven't seen you in years, Baby Holly. Did that Hopper girl dump your brother or something? She was totally depressed after you guys dropped off the face of the planet."

I shook my head, clicked my pen. "No, they're still together. He went away for college. What are you doing here? I thought you went to Grace…"

"Me and Jesus had a disagreement." Summer smirked the kind of smirk like we shared some kind of secret. Only, I know we don't have secrets, and I wouldn't care to be in on them any longer if we did. "Your hair got super long." As if hers hadn't. Her curls cling to her impossibly thin waist, but I shouldn't be surprised. She had always been tiny; short and slim and snarky. Like one of those yippee dogs people kept in purses. "It's totally fucking angelic."

Everything was always _angelic_ to Summer. She reached over and twirled a blonde lock of mine around her index finger. Turned to ask Preston Lee, "Don't you agree? Isn't Baby's hair fucking angelic?"

To appease her, he nodded. To appease her, the pet name stuck like Summer to my side—though most kids probably assume it was _me_ who followed _her_ around like a purse-less puppy. Some kids never saw us apart since. Some kids ceased to remember my real name. But everyone knew "Baby." Eyes began to linger. Trouble began to follow. Because while everyone was drawn to Summer like moths to a flame, I was the one she set on fire.

IV.

When it comes to family, the effect is the exact opposite. It makes me feel like sometimes I am two people inside one body, living two separate lives.

I was nine the first time I realized I was an accident, and eleven when I realized I was my parents' least favorite—more afterthought than baby daughter. Still am, even after my brother and sister had essentially abandoned us years ago.

My parents do not care for me in the most literal sense of the term. Ever since the divorce, they never got angry with me, or upset. They simply can't bring themselves to give a shit, so achingly apathetic it makes my stomach twist with a constant hint of nausea.

Today is no exception.

Karen white-knuckles the steering wheel the entire drive home, her lips pursed, her breathing even, not uttering a word. It is the most reaction I have seen from her in years.

Disappointment and the low-volume serenade of The Cranberries weigh the air between us. That, and the smell of stale menthol and Fabreze.

It isn't until she pulls into the driveway and locks the house's front door behind us that she speaks to me. "I am going to call your father." Her words fall clipped, her voice calm and even. Her eyes focus on the wallpaper behind my head. She has never looked so old. "Just go to your room. Don't come out until I call you down."

Turning on my heel, I head for the stairs, but Karen calls out again. "And Holly?"

I look back and see my mother's outstretched hand, palm up. Her brow is raised like a dare. Her fingers curl quickly into a _gimme_ motion.

With my best effort to keep any hint of emotion off my face, I pull my beloved Zippo from the pocket of my denim jacket and place it in my mother's palm with a heavy heart. Karen's fingers don't curl around it. Her hand remains outstretched and waiting.

I can't help but huff; swing my backpack around to my front, shuffle through the side pocket, and produce for her a white Bic, too. "Am I done here?"

"I need the matches, too."

"What matches?"

" _Holly…_ " she warns slowly.

And so I reach into the inside pocket of my jacket and hand over my matchbook. It is easier this way.

Karen makes a fist around it all, crosses both arms over her chest. Finally, she looks me in the eye as she says, "I am very, very disappointed in you, Holly." Finally, a reaction; the worst of its kind. Too bad it's not enough. Too bad she isn't screaming or crying or begging to know why. "Now go."

So I did. Because what else is there to do?

There are only so many ways I can beg my mother to love me without screaming it in her face.

V.

From my room, I can hear the distinct voices of Karen and Ted arguing downstairs. I strain to make out what they are saying, and fail.

Hours pass like this. I do what I can to keep busy. To stop my mind from wandering and my hands from shaking.

I put on music and make my bed—tuck in the corners of my faded flannel sheets and straighten Nancy's hand-me-down quilt—for the first time in what feels like years. I take all the clothes that litter my floor and hang them in the closet, including my denim jacket, stolen from Michael's room after he left for college and worn damn near every day since. It isn't long before I pull it down and shrug it back on. It feels weird not having it, even now in the comfort of my own room.

After I decide I'm sick of cleaning, I busy myself putting on makeup as if I'm going out: smudging eyeliner and layering mascaras and smoothing on lipgloss. Then I wash it all off.

I sip on the bottle of Bacardi I keep hidden my dresser, if only to ease my nerves. While sifting through my desk drawers and reading through old notebooks, I find an empty box of matches. Buried, forgotten, and half-empty. Sitting by my open window, I strike them one by one and watch them burn down 'til the heat tests my fingertips before blowing them out and piling the charred sticks back inside their small box.

It isn't until half-past ten that Karen calls for me.

Ted is hanging up the phone as I pull myself down the staircase. Karen beckons me to the dining room, where the three of us sit ourselves down at the table. I feel infinitely small and mildly intoxicated.

I wait for hell to start raining down. And wait. And wait. Begin praying for it, even. But minutes drag on and nothing comes. Silence fills every crack and corner of this big, empty house. It cloaks the new family room couch and floats down through the basement. It finds its way between pictures of happier times and fills the cavities of Nancy's bare bookshelves. She took everything with her when she left. Michael took nothing; not even his stupid jacket. Each of them took the first chance they got and ran far, far away. They started over someplace new and left me to watch after the old house at the end of the cul-de-sac and the crumbling family that inhabits it. The family that now sits around the dining table, long broken and waiting for someone else to say the first word.

It is the toaster that shatters the silence. Karen leaves for the kitchen, then reappears shortly with a plate of two perfectly yellow Eggos and a fresh glass of wine for herself. She places the waffles in front of me, alongside some silverware.

It is an offering, and although I haven't eaten since breakfast and my stomach years for something to absorb the liquor, I cannot accept it.

"You need to eat," Karen insists, her words razor sharp. "You haven't had dinner yet."

"Not hungry," I mumble, cross my arms, will my stomach not to growl anytime soon.

Another stretch of silence proceeds. It feels like an eternity passes before Ted clears his throat. "What were you thinking? Pulling a stunt like that."

"Clearly, I wasn't."

Ted scoffs. "Clearly."

Karen asks, "What do you expect us to do with you?"

I look her dead in the eye for once but don't give her the satisfaction of any guesses, or even a shrug. Karen already has an answer. I know it. It is easier if I wait for her to give it.

And eventually, as always, she does. "Holly, we're sending you to Chicago—"

_"What?"_

"You'll be living with Michael. There is a great school there that we will get you enrolled in as soon as possible.

"No! No, that is _so_ fucking unfair!"

"Sweetheart," Ted's voice is pure exasperation, "life isn't fair. You set fire to school property, and you did it _on campus_ …"

" _No,"_ I interject. "You can't just dump all your problems on your son and expect him to—"

"…you're way past strike twenty, and now you have to live with the consequences."

 _"Dad,"_ I plead. I need to be here. In Hawkins. I need to be with Ryan and Summer, the only two people who can keep me sane. Besides, I hate Chicago, with its loud crowds and busy streets and ever-present stench of body odor. It only ever reminds me that I'll never fit in. Not anywhere. Not with Michael and his new family, and especially not with my own.

Karen cuts in. "Am I speaking _Chinese_ in this house? You're lucky they're not sending you to prison over this, Holly. Do you understand that?"

I can't help but roll my eyes. This whole thing has become _so_ melodramatic. Send me to prison for what? Like Murphy said, there was no lasting damage. Nothing was lost that couldn't easily be replaced.

"Listen to your mother. You're going to Chicago."

Of course, my parents picked today out of the last five years to be the only time they agree on anything.

And slowly it dawns on me, from the expressions on their faces and the familiar disappointment in their eyes, that this was not a new idea for them. This must be something they have considered before. What's stopped them until now?

I want to scream, but that would only make things worse. There is no fight to be had. No shouting match to be won. We have each given up on each other, on this family.

Maybe divorce does that to people; after someone loses the only one they're supposed to love more than anything in the world, more than life itself, it becomes so easy to let go of everything else. The wedding china. The house. The daughter.

I look back and forth between my parents, praying for a punchline that never comes. All I get is Ted telling me, "I'll drive you to the bus station in Bloomington first thing tomorrow morning," and no matter how hard I try, I can't find the humor in it.

I should've known.


	3. Crybaby

I.

There are embers in my lungs—glowing, growing, raging. They build like wildfire. Smoke crawls up my throat.

I am burning, burning, burning, from the inside out.

And somehow I am cold. I am so cold.

Inside, I am ablaze. I am the sharpest strike of lightning. I am the bluest part of the flame.

Outside, I am metallic. I am a streetlamp in a snowstorm. I am a razor etching ice.

I am a criminal tied to a stake.

I don't know where I am.

Lost is where I am.

My skin bubbles and blisters and breaks.

There is pain. So much pain.

I try and cry for help but smoke billows out. I try and cry for help, but my tongue has caught flame.

II.

My nightmares have become so vivid, so real, that I can almost taste smoke as I wake up to a tap on my window.

My hands are untouched, unblemished. I exhale.

There comes a second tap. Then a third.

With a groan, I roll over and cover my aching head with a pillow, but the taps do not disappear. I pull myself to my feet and cross the room, throw open the window.

Ryan drops his palm of pebbles on the grass, pulls himself up the back of the garage and through my bedroom window. His long frame and lean muscles make it seem easy. "You on house arrest now?" he jokes, but his face quickly falls when he sees my own. "Baby—"

His sandy blond hair sticks out in all sorts of directions, as if he has been tossing and turning all night, but his blown pupils and the bags forming under his wild eyes make it seem as if he hasn't slept at all.

Is this how I'll remember him? Will I ever see him again after tonight?

I turn away. Banish the thought, busy myself with my bottle of rum. What time is it anyway?

"Hey." He eases the alcohol from my grip, sets it gently on the nearest surface. He takes my blisterless hands in his. Talks to them instead of me. "What happened?"

The clock on my bedside table reads 2:54. "I got expelled," I tell it's glowing red numbers.

I sneak a glance at Ryan in time to catch his eyebrows shoot up his forehead. "Fuck." He is shocked, but not surprised. Good to know we're on the same page.

"Yeah. Fuck."

He backs up and plops himself on the end of my bed; the springs groan beneath him. " _Fuck,"_ he repeats, mostly to himself. The gears in his head turn as reality sinks in. He runs a hand through the front of his hair and it all stands up straight, as if electric. "What are you gonna do? Transfer? Do you think you'll have to repeat junior year?"

I look down to my feet, notice I never even took off my shoes. Or my jacket, come to mention it. "My parents are shipping me off to Michael's. Said they'll get me into some school in Chicago."

Ryan's mouth falls open and hangs there, speechless. His eyes search my face, but he can't seem to find whatever it is he's looking for. "But… that's, like, hours away."

"I think that's the point." I hate the way my voice sounds; so small, so fragile. "I leave tomorrow morning."

He buries his face in his hands, falls backwards on the bed. "Fuck."

I set myself on the bed too, up by the pillows, and pull my knees into my chest. I grip onto myself tightly, as if it'll hold all the pieces together.

"Come with me," I hear myself whisper, loose ideas of a plan weaving together in my head. But nothing I can be sure of. Not yet. Nothing concrete. Merely fleeting dreams.

"To Chicago?" Ryan peers through his fingers at me. I try to convince myself he doesn't sound incredulous.

"Anywhere. I dunno." I have never lived anywhere but here, in this house. I have never travelled farther than Lake Michigan. "West, maybe."

Silence stretches on. Ryan peeks at the clock. "It's late," is all he manages.

He sits himself up, begins pulling the shoes off my feet. He peels back the covers and moves toward the switch on the wall. Just before he flicks off the light, I catch glimpse of a single tear slipping down his cheek. He pulls me down into the bed, slips us under the covers, and tucks me under his chin.

III.

The first time Ryan and I spent the night together—in the most innocent sense of the term, I swear—was the night we truly got to talking for the first time.

Don't get me wrong, it wasn't like we hadn't _spoken_ before; we had been on the track team together, and lab partners my freshman year, but he was a grade above me, and more an acquaintance of Summer's than he was of mine, so our conversations had ever gotten much past those general topics. That being said, out of all the kids at Kevin Shaw's party, Ryan was the one I knew best.

It wasn't as much of a party as it was a group hang. And it wasn't much of a group hang as it was a let's-all-pitch-in-and-try-hard-drugs-in-Shaw's-basement kind of thing.

Only, no one told me that. Summer asked me to meet her there, but she never showed, and I wouldn't find out about the screaming match she had with her father that prevented her from leaving the house until the next day.

That night, inside Shaw's basement, six of my classmates had taken extreme interest in the coffee table, where Trevor Powell was forming even lines of fine white powder with the edge of his credit card. Outside, I waited for Ryan to reemerge with two more drinks.

"They're fucking insane," he said, a blast of central heat and Nirvana pouring out behind him before he slid the glass door shut. He passed me a room-temperature bottle and pocketed the caps. "I don't know what I was expecting, but it sure as hell wasn't cocaine."

"Me, too," I told him. Then, after a moment's hesitation, "I'm surprised you're here."

He grinned brilliantly, the porch light casting dark shadows across his face. "My reputation precedes me?"

I chuckled shortly. Sipped my flat beer.

"I _do_ go to parties," he said. "Just not big ones."

I nodded, completely unsure of how to respond.

"What time did Summer say she was coming?"

"She didn't."

And that was about when the alcohol began to warm our bodies and relax our tongues, and we began talking, _really_ talking, for once. Nothing was off the table. Not life, not death, not aliens. Nothing.

"I get nightmares," he told me at one point, after we'd moved to the trampoline. We lay on our backs and watched clouds float across the crescent moon. "Like, a lot, actually."

"Me, too," I told him, but I wasn't sure why. I'd never admitted that to anyone before. Not even Summer. "Sometimes they're different—like I'm drowning or being buried alive or something—but usually it's the same exact one, over and over again. I've been having it ever since I was a kid, so I'm not even scared of it anymore, but I think I should be."

"What's it about?"

I turned my head to look at him, but he was already studying me. And he was close. Real close. Close enough that I could make out the fair stubble of his jaw and the impressive length of his lower eyelashes. The way is front teeth overlapped just slightly and the something in his dark eyes that made me tell him:

"I'm not sure if I'm really little, or the hallway's really big, but it's long and dark either way." I shift back to look at the moon. "There are all these Christmas lights strung across the ceiling, and they light up, one by one, and I follow them, but I don't need them. It's like I know the way already. The room at the end is full of lamps—stop laughing, I'm serious!—it's full of tons of lamps everywhere and I'm standing in the middle. And the lamps, they go crazy lighting up. Like the light's chasing itself in a circle around me so fast I can't keep up. Then it's everywhere all at once. It's hypnotic, actually. It feels like magic. And then they all shut out at once."

"That's it?"

"No. No, then a monster tries to come through the wall. But it's like the wall is made of rubber, and it keeps stretching against it. I know I should run away from it, but I'm frozen. Stuck in place. Right before it breaks through to get me, I wake up. Every time."

Ryan considered this. "Christmas lights and lamps and wall-monsters, huh?"

"Terrifying, I know," I agreed dryly.

Ryan laughed. "You're nothing like I thought you'd be, Baby Wheeler."

"Ryan Frazier, I'm not even going to ask if that's a good or bad thing. I don't want to talk about me. Tell me about your nightmares."

"See? That's exactly what I mean!" He rolled onto his side and propped himself up on his elbow, shaking me and the whole trampoline.

"Still not asking."

"Fine. Then I'll just tell you that you're nothing like Summer Kaine-Callahan and we can leave it at that."

"Did you think I would be?"

He grinned smugly. "You're asking…"

"Fuck off, Frazier," I laughed.

"You have to admit, it's easy to assume you guys would be similar." He turned to lay back down. "But you're not."

Silence filled the night between us as I busied myself with not asking.

"Which is a good thing, by the way. Not that there's anything wrong with Summer… She's just—"

"The nightmares, Ryan."

"Right. So I've never had the same one twice, but I'm always alone and a lot of them are at the middle school, which is weird. Did you go to Hawkins Middle?"

I nodded. And I listened, as best as I could, though the beer was making a blanket over me, sleepy and distant.

For the life of me, I can't remember when we stopped talking, or when we fell asleep, or when he wrapped an arm around me and tucked me under his chin, but I woke up just like that, shivering in the October chill, eyes burning in the early sun.

"Shit," I muttered under my breath, squeezing my eyes shut against the pulsing in my head, burying my face in his chest to chase the light away.

IV.

Now, a year and a half later, Ryan holds me that same way, my face warm, nuzzled against his T-shirt, his fingers playing with the ends of my hair, our legs tangled up in the blankets.

Sleep has begun drifting over me once again when Ryan whispers through the darkness, "Holly, you have to go to Chicago."

"Huh?"

"You have to go. At least 'til you finish high school. A-and I can come visit… Yeah? We'll figure it out, I promise. But you have to go." He presses his lips to the top of my head and tightens his arm around my waist. "You have to."

I know he is right. It stings, but he is right. I can think up as many dreams and fantasies of running away from this as I want, but in the end, I really don't have a choice. In the end, this is all on me. I am the one who fucked it all up. I am the one who made this mess, who put myself here. I cannot be selfish. I cannot screw over Ryan, too. He needs to stick around to finish his senior year, to watch after all his little siblings.

I know he is right, and all I can do now is cry. Cry and cry and cry into Ryan's stupid shirt, and no matter how much snot I accidentally smear over it, he still holds me tighter and tighter and tighter, and brushes the hair away from my wet face, and he doesn't try to tell me to breathe, or that it will be okay, or any of that bullshit; he only rubs circles in my back and lets me pour out over him until I finally fall into a dreamless sleep, and I don't deserve it. Any of it. I really don't.

When I wake up the next morning, Ryan is gone. In his place, on the pillow next to mine, is a note scrawled over a torn corner of loose leaf. It goes like this:

_Had to leave before Karen found me and ripped me a new one. Call me when you can. —Love, Ryan_

I read it over and over and over again. Then I stuff it into the pocket of the jacket I find myself still wearing.

V.

 _"_ _Chicago?!_ But that's bogus!" Summer shouts over the phone. "You can't just leave me here, Baby…"

With the cordless tucked between my ear and shoulder, I move around the room, taking a note from Nancy's book and shoving damn near everything I own into a duffel bag. "I don't have a choice."

"Put me on with Karen. I'll tell her the whole thing was my fault."

It wouldn't do any good. "Summer…" I sigh defeatedly.

"Seriously, Baby. Chicago? That seems a little harsh, don't you think? All my mom is doing is switching me to Northern, and then my dad probably won't let me go anywhere without a police escort 'til the Second Coming."

I frown at the bag in my hand, now overflowing. I take a note from Michael's book and all dump its contents out on my bed; only absolute essentials make it back in.

"What does Ryan think about all this?"

I hesitate behind closed eyes before admitting, "He thinks I should go."

"You're fucking joking."

I'm not.

"Baby, tell me you're fucking joking."

I can't. "I didn't say he _liked_ the idea, he just—"

"Are you breaking up?"

" _What?"_ I tug a shirt from the pile and a boot tumbles to the floor with a thud. "No! No."

"Because I swear to God, I'll kill him. With my bare hands. Don't think I won't."

I can't help but crack a smile at the sentiment. There is no doubt in my mind that if I ever asked her to, Summer would try. "We're not breaking up, Summer. He's not like that."

"Yeah, if he knows what's best for him," she resigns.

A silence hangs on the line between us. One that isn't awkward, or uncomfortable. It just is. Then Summer's voice comes softly, "Baby?"

"Yeah?"

"This shit bites, and it's all my fault. Really. I am _so_ sorry, Baby Holly. There aren't enough words in the English language to describe how sorry I am. I need you to know that."

I zip my duffel bag shut, look to one of the photographs of the two of us I have taped to my mirror. In it, I am giving her a piggyback ride down some cracked sidewalk at dusk. The setting sun makes a silhouette of the distant trees. She holds a peace sign out toward the camera, but I'm too busy giggling to notice it.

"I know," I tell her. "I'm sorry, too."


	4. Basketcase

I.

The bus reeks of stale air and body odor. The blue patterned cloth of my window seat itches the backs of my thighs, and I curse myself for wearing shorts. Eventually, I lay down my denim jacket as a barrier.

The closer we travel to Chicago, the more the bus fills up at each stop. Indianapolis brings a big crowd. It would be so easy for me to ditch this whole plan, if I really want to. Get off this bus before it is too late and learn to fend for myself, but I don't have much money or sense of direction, and I'm really not in the mood to dig myself into deeper shit than I'm already in, so I resort to watching the world pass by out my window and listening to the mix CD Ryan left in my Discman.

"Anyone sitting here?" a voice rumbled through the music. It takes me a second to realize the question is for me. Waiting for a response is a boy about my age, with dreadlocked hair and a green oversized flannel and the words Basket Case emblazoned across the T-shirt underneath.

I shake my head. He offers a polite smile, slides into the seat next to me, drops his backpack to the floor at his feet. He mumbles something I can't quite make out over the music.

I pull my headphones down around my neck. "Huh?"

"Sorry. It was nothin'. I just said we match." He gestures between his shirt and my headphones. "Green Day."

"Oh." I frown at my Discman, at the colors of the CD spinning rapidly through the small window. I click the volume down five notches. "Sorry."

"No, no, you're fine. I like 'em, obviously. Just try not to go deaf."

I crack a smile, and he reaches into his backpack. "So, what's in Chicago?" he asks conversationally.

Here's the thing about me: I was never destined to be a trauma psychiatrist like Nancy, or a quantum physicist like Michael, but I'm smart. Smart enough not to tell a stranger on a bus where I'm going or what I'm doing once I get there. "Who said I'm going to Chicago?"

He shrugs. "It's either that or Lafayette."

"Lafayette's a fun city," I say.

He turns, searches my face, probably to be sure I'm just kidding. His smile builds from the inside out, takes up his whole face, practically, and we share a laugh.

"What about you? What's in Chicago?"

"No fair! You never answered." He pulls a canvas CD case from his bag, the front adorned with silver Sharpie doodles, and flips through his opinions. "I go to school there. Came down to visit my family for a few days.

So maybe he's not actually my age. But then again, I'm not too far off from college, myself.

Finally, he settles on a CD; AMISTAD has been scrawled in black ink across a blank disk. "My brother's band," he offers. "You'll like 'em."

I exchange the CD for Ryan's and pull my headphones back up. White noise hums in my ears. "What's he play?"

"Drums."

The first song starts with a guitar riff. The bass begins to rumble. Then the beat kicks in. I grin. "He's good. Really good."

"Yeah?"

"You play, too?"

He creases his brow and shakes his head, toys with his twine bracelet and leans back in his seat. "Nah. Music was not one of the traits I inherited through osmosis."

"Osmosis?"

"Yeah. You know, passive transport through a plasma membrane…"

"I know," I lie. "I just thought you inherit shit through genetics."

"I'm adopted. So was this guy," he taps the Discman, lightly so it doesn't skip. "So, no." He smirks. "Not genetics."

Oh. "Genetics don't mean shit, anyway," I offer. "My bother and sister are both geniuses, and then there's me."

"See? Osmosis! They sucked up all the genius for themselves."

I laugh. "My brother… He's what's in Chicago."

"That'll be sweet. You'll have fun."

But I can't be so sure. "I dunno." My face twists, gives too much away.

"Trust me. I love the city. There's so much to explore, no place to hide."

Maybe that isn't always a good thing. Maybe I prefer my world small and secret. Through my headphones comes a chorus, half-sung, half-shouted, about a rocket ship headed for far, far away.

II.

The bus lurches to a stop at the Chicago station and the boy next to me offers a lopsided grin. "Well, it was nice to meet you… What'd you say your name was?"

I didn't. "Baby," I answer automatically. How have I never realized before how stupid that must sound to a stranger? How does Holly sound so stupid to me?

The boy's thick brows peak. "Like the Spice Girl?"

My nose wrinkles. "No. Like a child."

"You sure? You kinda look like her."

"I do not!"

He cocked a brow. "Your hair would disagree."

"Just 'cause I'm blonde?" I run my fingers through the ends of my hair, as if protecting them from what we're hearing. "I can't help it…"

"And I can't help that blonde people look the same."

I chuckle at that, shake my head. He offers to grab my duffel bag from the overhead bin, and I let him, even though it isn't heavy, and he isn't any taller than me.

As we all shuffle off the bus in a single-file line. He says, "I'm Nathan, by the way. Sorry, I meant to tell you earlier, but it's not every day a guy meets a member of his favorite British girl group."

"I am not one of the Spice Girls." I laugh, roll my eyes.

"And I'm not convinced."

As I step off the bus, I begin to scan the parking lot for my brother. He isn't too difficult to find, towering over most of the waiting crowd. He waves a pale hand.

Nathan begins walking backwards in the other direction. "See you in another life, Baby Spice."

I wave, and he salutes me before we part ways.

"Who was that?" Michael asks once I'm in earshot.

"No one."

He pulls me in for a stiff hug. "How've you been, Hols? How was the ride?"

"Fine."

He slings my bag over his shoulder and leads me toward his car—a BMW, I can't help but notice—where he tosses the duffel in the back, next to the car seat.

We fold ourselves into the front and Michael heads toward his home.

"How's Charlie?"

"She's good!" Michael beams proudly. "She's grown a lot since you last saw her."

Christmas was only three months ago. How much could a lot possibly be? "You think she's gonna be tall? Like us."

"Maybe…" Michael shrugs, considering. "Jane's pretty small. So is Nance, really. She might average out."

"Have you heard from her at all?" Nancy, I mean.

He chuckles shortly, without humor. "Me? No, not really. Jane keeps in touch—she's good with that. Last I heard she and Jonathan were moving upstate."

"Upstate? Why? I thought they loved New York."

"They do. And I guess the plan is to take the train in for work, but they don't like raising Chris in the city—which I can completely understand—and now that Nance is pregnant again—"

"Nancy's pregnant?" The words tumble out of my mouth and into my lap and I have no idea what to do with them. How had no one told me about this? Why had no one told me about this?

"Yeah." He eyes me concernedly. "She's due in late September, I think."

"Does Karen know?" I ask, fully feeling the bite of betrayal.

Michael shrugs. "I think so. But, then again, I thought you did, too."

I sink down in my seat, fold my arms over my chest. I hate that I'm the last to know everything. Had I not helped Summer yesterday and gotten banished to my brother's, I may have never known Jonathan and Nancy were expecting a second kid until I saw the extra swaddled ham on their next Christmas card. If they even bothered to send one this year.

"Charlie always does that," Michael muses.

"Does what?"

"That." He gestures toward my posture. "She's a lot like you, when you were little."

"Is that a good thing or a bad thing?"

"Good, I guess. I know how to deal with her."

"Fuck off," I tell him half-heartedly, and we both begin giggling. With it, the tension in the car eases its way off my shoulders and I am left feeling a little bit lighter.

We have never been best friends, and we suck at keeping in touch, but Michael is my big brother. My only brother. Always has been, always will be.

III.

For as long as I can remember, I've been closer with my sister-in-law than I ever have my actual sister. For all those years Nancy was never around, Jane was, whether she was babysitting me with Michael on a Friday night, or letting me practice braids on her curls, or watching chick-flicks with me that the rest of her friends refused to tolerate.

Even after Michael left for MIT and most of their other friends moved off to universities, she hung around. Maybe even more than before. She was lonely, I think, and something about the familiarity of Maple Street kept her coming back. Like that one time she was getting ready for a party, but came over to let me, at ten-years-old, help do her makeup.

"Which color?" she asked, opening an array of eyeshadows. I pointed to one in the far corner, glittering gold, and Jane got to work in the bathroom mirror, sweeping it around her eyes with a finger.

When she seemed happy with the results, she repeated the process on me. "Look up." She tilted my chin and smudged some underneath my lower eyelashes, too. From my spot sitting on the counter, my heels hit the cabinet beneath me as I swung my legs.

"You and Nancy have the prettiest eyes," she told me.

I frowned in disagreement. Jane's eyes were wide and round, like a doll's, and the color of honey.

"You're lucky to have her as a sister." Even back then, I couldn't bring myself to think the same. My memories of Nancy were so vague, so fragile and fleeting, her visits so few, so far between, that I may as well have only dreamt of her. Jane must have read this all on my face. "I don't see mine much, either."

"You have a sister?"

Jane nodded. "She's older, too. Doesn't live around here anymore, either."

Always running away, these girls. Jane moved onto mascara, first on herself, then on me. She said, "Nancy was the one who taught me how to do makeup; helped me get ready for my first dance." She smiled, an old memory resurfacing across her face. "But your brother did it for me once, too."

Michael? "Why?"

Jane laughed. "Playing dress up." I grinned at the idea. "He wasn't bad, either."

A silence fell over us, suddenly solemn. Jane pursed her lips and studied her work.

I asked, "Do you miss him?"

She nodded, "Do you?"

I nodded, too, but in truth, I wasn't sure. He came back to visit often enough, and when he had lived at home he was never around much, anyway. Michael being gone wasn't terribly different for me; he had always tried to keep me at least an arm's length away.

A smile reappeared on Jane's face, but it didn't quite reach her eyes. She fished around in her makeup bag. "Mike would do anything for you, you know," she told me, so seemingly set in this confidence, but I just remembered how people said things they didn't mean all the time.

IV.

In all honesty, I've never bothered visiting Michael's house. Whatever it is I had been picturing isn't nearly as nice as this. The grey-faced brownstone towers three stories high. As Michael's car pulls up to the curb, a curtain swishes in one of the large, cast-iron framed windows. Shortly after, the front door swings open and Jane bounces down the front steps, Charlie balanced on her hip.

"Baby Holly!" Jane calls to me as I emerge from the car. Charlie smiles and points.

"How have you been?" I ask as she gathers me into a hug. I say hi to Charlie, too. Shake her small, socked foot.

"You remember Aunt Holly, don't you?" Jane asks Charlie, who answers by burying her face between her mom's neck and shoulder. "Can you say hi?"

"Hello," Charlie says, muffled by Jane's blouse.

She's a precious kid, I'll admit; the spitting image of her mother—all brown curls and rosy lips and dimpled cheeks. The only exception is her eyes, deep dark, almost black, like Michael's.

Charlie reaches for him as he approaches, tiny fingers grasping at the air between them. "Dada!"

Grinning, he trades my duffle bag for his squirming kid. "Hey, little lightning bug," he greets her, and Charlie grins so wide it wrinkles her nose. Then, to his wife, "How was she?"

"Good," Jane smiles. "She just woke up from a nap."

Jane begins leading the way inside, but I hang back, if only for a moment. I wrap my jacket tighter around my torso and take in the building that stands in front of me. It seems so foreign, so unreal, this place my brother has made a home.

V.

His house is grand and expensive. Even bigger on the inside than it seemed from the outside.

In the great room lives a fireplace, with photos in mismatched frames cluttering the mantle; most of Charlie, but of the Wheelers and the Hoppers and the Byers, too.

There is one of Michael and Jane and me, sitting barefoot and sunburnt on the back porch of my mother's house during Michael's first summer home from college.

One is from Nancy's wedding day, she in a shiny satin gown next to Jonathan in a crisp black tux, standing on the steps of a church with Jane and me holding peach roses, and Michael and Will in matching colored ties.

Another one shows young Michael holding up a three- or four-year-old me in his slim arms, our parents' wood-panelled living room the backdrop. His hair a raven mop falling to his eyes, mine tumbling down my back in fair pigtails. We both grin at the lens.

I find myself frowning at all of them. Did we still look this happy after the cameras were put away, or are we really all that great at pretending?


	5. Oversized

I.

Expulsion is the obvious elephant in the room over dinner, but as Wheelers we carry on with what we do best: ignoring it. The four of us, Michael and Jane and Charlie and I, sit around the cherry wood dining table. A green runner—the exact shade of the leaves on the floral wallpaper—spans its length, the picture perfect display for the dinner Jane prepared. Or rather, breakfast for dinner, which we all love.

"Gross," Michael wrinkles his nose as he watches me pour maple syrup over my bacon.

"You shouldn't knock your wife's cooking," I tell him, taking a bite of the sweet and salty combination. "She's right here."

He rolls his eyes hard enough to register on the Richter scale. Sometimes, we're more similar than I'd like to admit. "You know what I mean."

Jane laughs lightly as she wipes waffle debris from Charlie's reluctant face.

"Do you guys work tomorrow?" I ask, curious as to what the hell I'm supposed to do with myself while I'm here.

"I hope not," Michael sighed. "I have to make some calls. Get you into school."

I make a face at my eggs. "I can't just go to Jane's?" She was running some high school's library, last I remember.

"I work at a public school," she says as if it's an issue. As if I haven't gone to public school my whole life.

"Mom wants you in a private," Michael says matter-of-factly.

My eyes narrow, as if it'll help me understand any better. " _Why?"_

He shrugs. "I didn't ask. She picked the school, I'm just getting you in."

"If she thinks they'll give me some sort of track scholarship, then she really—"

"I don't think it has anything to do with track, Hols."

I drop my fork and immediately regret it as it clatters against the plate, probably sounding like a bomb went off to Charlie's little ears. She seems to be fine. I seem to be the only one who's not. "I'll never get in. Did she send you my grades?"

"Have a little faith in yourself, Baby Holly." Jane smiles gently, pierces a piece of waffle with her fork. "You have a lot more potential than you realize."

I sit back in my seat, look down at my hands because I cannot stand the look in her eyes.

II.

They have two guest rooms, and have set up the bigger one—on the second floor, at the end of the long hall—for me.

It is just as bad as I feared. The air smells of fresh linen and citrus. The bed, gigantic and lonely, consumes the majority of the space. Its duvet is a shade of brown sugar, but it is the crisp white sheets that match the drapes of the oversized windows, looking out toward Lake Michigan. A pinewood dresser anchors the space, where they've displayed a television alongside a lamp, a jewelry dish, and a framed photo of newborn Charlie and I. On the bedside table, propped next to an alarm clock and a telephone, is a card made of printer paper. Jane's neat handwriting reads _Welcome to Chicago, Aunt Holly!_ , accompanied by Charlie's fervent toddler scribbles. There is a bathroom and a closet that I don't dare to look at. I've never had my own bathroom before. I didn't bring enough clothes to warrant a closet.

I do not, cannot, will not belong here.

I cannot even pretend I deserve to belong here.

I set my duffel bag on the end of the bed. Jane pulls two remote controls from the top drawer of the dresser. "This one's for the cable box, this one's for the VCR. We have a ton of movies down in the den, so help yourself."

The _den_.

She goes on, gesturing toward an empty corner. "We'll get a desk to put here, so you can do homework. Hopefully, before you start school… There's towels, shampoo, everything like that in your bathroom. If there's anything missing, let me or Mike know… Oh! We have two phone lines. Mike does a lot of work on the computer, so we got a second; anyway, you don't need to worry about one of us being online if you want to use the phone. Um…" She sighs, searching the room for anything that might be missing, landing on my face last. Whatever it is she finds there, she frowns at it. "I know this must be hard for you."

I nod at my feet, at the sage-colored carpet, the lines left a vacuum.

"If you want someone to talk to, or need anything at all…"

"Sure, sure. I'll let you know."

The corners of her lips curve up in a smile. She reaches out and folds me into a hug.

"I'm so happy you're here," she tells me, and I believe her.

III.

I have the dream again; the one where I'm following the Christmas lights down the hall. The lamps hola-hoop around me, and I dizzy myself trying to follow them. This time, just before the monster breaks through the wall, daylight pierces my subconscious.

The nightmare slips away, and I blink back into existence.

For a moment, I forget where I am. There is light, so much light, coming in from the windows. I roll over and bury my head between my pillows, but the shams feel so foreign against my skin. I dare to peek at the clock: 6:23 a.m.

The need to pee is what pulls me out of bed and into the bathroom. The purple-hued circles beneath my eyes taunt me through the mirror. I try not to notice. I pee and try not to look at the crown molding. I brush my teeth and try to avoid coming to terms with the granite countertop. I flip my head over to pull my hair into a ponytail and try to ignore the ceramic tiles on the floor, cold under my bare feet.

My legs itch to move, run, explore. I abandon the bathroom, the bedroom, and start down the long hall toward the staircase. I pass the second guest room, bare and yearning for occupancy, a bathroom, identical to my own, and a laundry room, clothes sitting in baskets waiting to be folded.

The house feels so still.

My fingers trace the banister when I reach the staircase. Further down the hall is Michael and Jane's room, and Charlie's nursery. Downstairs, the distant sound of television. Upstairs, nothing. The carpet is soft on the soles of my feet as I ascend.

The walls are empty on the third floor—no pictures, no art, nothing. Muffled voices come from not too far. I find myself drawn to the sound. It leads me down the hall to a door, left slightly ajar. I stop as soon as I can make out what's being said.

"I'm really not asking for much—" Michael.

"I don't think you realize what this could mean for us." A woman's voice, definitely not Jane's. It is lilted with equal parts annoyance and an accent I can't quite place.

"So handle it. I trust you."

_"_ _Mike."_

He sighs deeply. I imagine him rolling his eyes at her. "I-I just need today. Just today, and that's it. It isn't like we haven't done this before."

"But I don't understand why you can't—"

"Something came up." His words are clipped. Final. He pauses before adding, "A family something. Okay?"

Silence draws out long enough to trick me into thinking that's the end of it. Then she asks, "Is Nancy alright?''

"Yeah, no, Nancy's fine. She's fine."

"The younger one, then?"

It hits me in the gut, that feeling of being left out. Of not being important enough. Of never being as good as my sister. It makes my breath catch for a moment or two.

Michael tells her, "Holly," and she echoes the name.

The woman and I both wait for him to elaborate on the topic, but he doesn't. Come to think of it, I'm not sure how much Karen told him. She loves to gossip, but not nearly as much as she loves her image.

The woman sighs. "So there's no way you can make it?"

"Not today."

"I'll be sure to call and let you know how it goes, then."

Furniture creaks as if someone stands up. I take off, back down the hall, before they can realize I'm there.

IV.

I need to clear my mind. Work the momentum out of my body the only way I know how.

I sprint to the end of the block, then double back. I sprint two blocks, then double back. I go for three, then double back. Coach Kelley always has us run eight laps to warm up before starting practice, but I'm afraid to turn any corners here and not be able to find my way back.

I run three blocks in the other direction, then double back.

Michael is sitting on the front steps, waiting for me, a mug of coffee in his hands.

I stop in my tracks when I see him, end up walking the rest of the way. Squinting through the early sun, hands on my hips and lungs gulping air, I watch him watch me.

"I don't know how you do that for fun," he finally says.

I dig the toe of my gym shoe into the concrete sidewalk. "It's a lot more fun than science."

Michael shakes his head, sips his coffee. He pats the step next to him, and I come sit.

The morning stone is cool beneath me. I press my palms flat against it.

"I got the day off," he tells me. I pretend I don't already know. "We can do whatever you want."

I don't know what I want. A cigarette is what I want.

"There's this one place, not too far from here, that has great milkshakes." He bumps my shoulder with his. "You still like vanilla?"

I can't help it; I smirk. Wrap my arms around my knees. "You still like Oreo?"

V.

It was Michael who first taught me a good milkshake could cure damn near anything.

Our father had invited the two of us over to his new apartment for the first time since our mother made him leave that summer. It was suffocatingly hot, even with the windows thrown open. Dishes piled in the sink, and dust piled on every surface.

We sat in the living room, ate room-temperature pizza off paper plates, and pretended nothing was the matter. "It's great to finally have you guys here," he said. "I know it's only one bedroom, but I was thinking I could get one of those couches with a pull out bed, and maybe you guys could stay over every once in a while. Huh?"

Michael took a large bite of his pizza. I sat staring at mine.

Ted turned to me. "Something wrong with the pizza, Holly?"

Michael dropped his plate to the coffee table and reached for mine. "She doesn't like pepperoni, Dad. Never has."

He started picking the meat off for me, dropping it to his own plate.

Ted sighed deeply. "Michael, she is _nine._ Everyone is going to have to quit coddling her at some point."

"She's going through a lot." His words were both testing and final.

Ted sat back in his seat. "Now, what the hell is that supposed to mean?"

"Language," Michael policed under his breath. I suppressed a smile.

"What did you say?" Ted was teetering on an edge. We could all sense it. The hum of the refrigerator could sense it, the sputtering fan could sense it, the dust particles floating in the window's light could sense it.

"Forget it," he grumbled, passed my now pepperoni-less pizza back to me. "Here."

"Thanks," I said softly, and his lips curved, but it wasn't quite a smile.

I took a few bites to appease my father, but the food felt like soggy cardboard in my mouth.

Ted flipped on the television once conversation dried out, which didn't take very long. Michael and I suffered through two whole episodes of _Gilligan's Island_ we had all already seen a million times before he reminded Ted it was getting late.

I barely made it out of the building before I started crying. I don't even know why I was so upset by it all, but I was. It seemed like the saddest thing I had ever seen. Sadder than when dogs die in movies, even. I couldn't help but break down right there in the parking lot, heaving big, ugly sobs.

"Hey, hey, Baby Holly," Michael stooped down to my height, swiped at my wet cheeks. "It's going to be okay. We're going to be okay. I promise."

"I want it to be okay right now," I choked out.

"I know, I know. Me, too." He swallowed hard. "Is there anything I can do?"

I shook my head, wiped the snot from my nose with my wrist

He picked me up and carried me the rest of the way to the car, my arms circling his neck, my legs circling his waist—even though I was probably too old by then—and let me sob into his shoulder.

"Just try and breathe, Hols," but the more I thought about it, the worse it got. I was beginning to feel lightheaded, distant. Like reality had blurred.

He folded me into the backseat and climbed in the front. "I have an idea," he told me, and by the time we crossed town to the Sunnyside Diner, I'd finished crying.

We sat at the far end of the bar, my legs swinging back and forth from the high stool. We ordered milkshakes with extra whipped cream and a side of fries. And when the fries were gone, we simply ordered more, and when I finished my shake, Michael poured the extra vanilla from his steel cup into my glass. Returning the favor, I gave him my side cup of extra Oreo, and I smiled around my straw.

Because for once, it was just the two of us. My big brother all to myself.

For once it felt like everything was okay right now. If only for a little while.

 


	6. Boldface

I.

We thank the waiter that sets down our milkshakes, but as soon as he turns away, we swap our steel-cupped extras.

"So," I begin, plucking my cherry from the whipped cream's peak. "How's the whole school thing going?"

"Successful," he tells me, nonchalant.

I raise an eyebrow. "The hell does that mean?"

"It means I succeeded," he says in that flat, _duh_ tone of his. "I got you into the school Mom wants."

Well, that was pretty fucking fast. "When were you planning to tell me?"

The sound of muffled vibration comes from somewhere close by. Michael reaches into the pocket of his khakis, produces a cell phone, and glances at the screen before pressing decline. "Mom has to fax them some consent thing—"

 _"Consent_ thing?"

"Yeah, some privacy thing that makes me your primary guardian in the school's system. I dunno. But mom has to call them, and then they'll call me with your start date, and you'll be good to go."

"Great," I said, far more sarcastically than I had intended.

His cell phone vibrates again, loud against the table. He catches it quickly and declines.

"Do you need to take that?" I ask.

"No. It's just work." He silences the phone and stuffs it back in his pocket. A crease of concern forms between his brows, and he stares intently at his milkshake rather than drink it, or make eye contact with me. I decide he is not telling me the whole truth.

I twirl my straw between my thumb and pointer finger. "What do you do, anyway?"

"Research," he responds simply. "You know that."

"What are you researching?"

He gives me a testing look. "I thought you didn't give a shit about physics."

I shrug, sip my shake. "Might change my mind if it means becoming an instant gazillionaire like you."

"You'll have to get your grades up before anything," he teases. The deflection does not get past me. "What's your angle with that, anyway? You do exactly enough work to make sure you stay on the track team? I know you're better at math than, what, a _C._ "

C+, but whatever.

"Don't feel like you have to act like you're my father, Michael. I've taken care of myself just fine for a while now."

He looks me dead in the eye and asks, "And are you happy with where that's gotten you?" as if it doesn't sting. As if he knows. As if he's been there the whole time, seen our parents live the way they do now, woken up every day in that house at the end of the cul-de-sac. As if he isn't the one who got to leave only a year after our father did.

"Fuck you, Michael." From my jacket pocket, I slam a few wadded bills down on the table and head out of the diner, the bells on the door jangling behind me.

I have no idea where I'm going or how to get there, but my head is starting to pound and I need a fucking cigarette.

II.

To the teenaged CVS cashier, I radiate loveliness. I am the new, fucking angelic embodiment of Summer Kaine-Callahan. I even smile with teeth for once and go as far as to compliment the spacers in his ears. He blushes so hard he forgets to ID me, and my seventeen-year-old ass walks out with a brand new Bic and a pack of Camel Blues.

Slouched against the building, I smoke most of the way through my first one before Michael finally finds me.

"Jesus, Holly, you practically disappeared." He is breathless, already forgetting how fast I am. He eyes my cigarette warily.

"Don't worry, I won't smoke around your kid. Or in your house."

"Or at all, would be ideal."

I shoot him a look.

"Hols, look. I shouldn't have said that earlier. I'm sorry. I don't know what you've been dealing with, but I want you to feel like you can talk to me about it."

And there is the truth of it all. Our mother is feeding him, like she has always done me, information about his siblings on a need-to-know basis.

I flick the end of my cigarette, watch the ashes scatter with the wind over the concrete sidewalk. "You sound like Karen."

"Shit," he sighs, leans back against the wall next to me.

"You don't want to be like them?" Our parents, I mean. The life Michael is building for himself now is all Ted and Karen could have dreamed for him and more.

"I don't think we can help it," he shrugs. Then, when I don't reply, "Do you?"

"I think we always have choices. Always." I stub my cigarette butt out on the stone window ledge. I try to do the best I can with the decisions I've been handed. Whether I am proud of them or not, my choices are mine, and I am learning how to be happy with them.

Ted and Karen will never be able to say the same. Can Michael?

III.

Even after my brother left for college, Jane used to take me shopping all the time. Trying on clothes was one of those hobbies she had that none of her other friends shared.

I liked it because it was the only time I got to get clothes that weren't hand-me-downs from Jane, or our neighbor Erica, or even Mike.

We'd spend hours at Starcourt, debating on buying cute tops, or laughing over ridiculous new trends.

There was one trip where she dragged me into a Payless and talked me into trying on a pair of real, honest-to-God running shoes. The kind that were so lightweight it felt like walking on air, with support in the arch and mesh panelling at the sides. The kind my mother refused to buy me because my feet were still growing.

They felt like momentum. I walked five laps around the store. It took all I had in me to keep from darting straight to the border of Canada and back.

"Do you like them?" Jane asked me.

"I feel like they're blistering my heels," I lied, to her and to myself. I didn't have enough money on me. I'd have to save up my allowance for two months in order to afford them.

"You just need to break them in," she said simply. "But you can't keep racing the boys at recess in these. She held up my beaten Keds, dirt caked around the rubber soles, a hole in the canvas by one of the heels.

I was more concerned with how the hell she knew who I was or wasn't racing at recess.

"C'mon, I'll buy them for you." She smiled sweetly. I gave her a look. "For your birthday."

My birthday wasn't for another month, but I pulled the gorgeous shoes off my feet, placed them in the box, and handed them over to her anyway.

"As long as you try out for cross country next year. Promise?"

Hawkins cut middle school cross country last year. Jane was like that, though. She was always encouraging me to get involved, take advantage of all my fine public education system had to offer.

Homeschooled kids didn't know what it was really like, I guess. They didn't realize how content a girl could be beating all the boys at their own games during recess—no matter what kind of shoes she was wearing—and leaving at the end of the day with everyone else.

She bought the shoes for me, regardless, and we made a deal. I told her I'd go for track when I reached high school, and she told me when I made the team—because how could I not, after three years of practice in these new shoes—she'd buy me a brand new pair. Any kind I wanted.

That was the thing about Jane Hopper: She wanted me to go after what made me happy, and she wanted me to have nice things as a result.

I think she only got hand-me-downs growing up, too.

IV.

When Jane returns from work, hauling Charlie home from daycare, she asks me if I'd like to go to the store with her. Only, instead of going to the mall to search for the perfect pair of jeans, we load Charlie in the car and head out to Kmart to shop for boring shit.

We get a system going. Jane pushes the cart and checks things off the list. I stretch to grab items off the shelves too high for her. Charlie points to things and asks, "What's that?"

"Have you heard from Ted lately?" Jane asks as I pull down a package of paper towels.

I shrug. "Sometimes."

"Really?"

"Yeah. Every once in a while he'll decide he wants to be in my life. Such bullshit— Sorry, Charlie."

Jane frowns. We continue strolling down the aisles. "Mike hasn't heard from him since… since who knows when."

I offer an apologetic pout, but maybe that's what they asked for when they moved away. With this idea, I am met with a sudden, overwhelming ache in my chest. I hope it isn't the case. I need Ryan. I need Summer. How soon will it be before they forget about me?

I should call them.

I should, I should, but I probably won't.

Then the realization that neither one of my parents have tried to reach out to me since I've been here dawns on me.

Charlie begins straining against the confines of her shopping cart seat, grasping in the direction of a Goldfish endcap.

"We have some at home," Jane reminds her, and pushes the cart away.

For Charlie, this is apparently devastating. Her small face crumples, her eyes grow misty. She mumbles something I can't quite make out.

"The daycare said she refused to nap today," Jane tells me. She sighs deeply and tries to wipe the tears from Charlies round little cheeks.

Charlie swats Jane's hand away and begins to sob, her head becoming swollen and red.

 _"_ _Charlene,"_ Jane warns.

And that is when all the lights in our corner of Kmart flicker out, all the freezers lining the back wall of the grocery section sputter off. Charlie spooks and loses it. She is sobbing sobs so loud I don't know how they possibly come from her tiny lungs, but at this point, I can't blame her. I would, too, if I was that small. Being in the dark, especially so unexpectedly, so helplessly is a scary thing.

Jane tries coaxing her to relax, taking her sleeve around her thumb and using it to catch snot before it has the chance to pour out of Charlie's button of a nose.

I offer to take the kid to the car. This whole Kmart thing is kind of boring, anyway.

She is fussy in my arms, flailing around like an eel, but I manage to hold on 'til I finally wiggle her into the straps of her car seat, and by the time I climb into the front, she is still teary, but at least she isn't wailing anymore.

All the while, I think about what Michael had told me. How Charlie is exactly like me, when I was little. So I turn on the car and put on the radio on and flip through the stations until I land on something that satisfies her.

She settles down to Radiohead and we sit listening together and maybe Michael is right. Maybe we aren't too different, Charlie and I.

V.

There is a knock at my bedroom door. I have been flipping through channels with nothing good to watch, and finally settled on reruns of _Fresh Prince._

"Can I come in?" Michael asks from the other side.

I don't say anything, just mute the TV and wait for him to crack open the door.

"Hey, Hols." His words are careful in his mouth. I watch him from my spot sitting on the bed. His arms fumble uncomfortably around before he extends one out to me, a glossy brochure in hand. "Everything went through. You should start tomorrow, so you don't get too far behind."

Something in me hesitates a moment before taking it from him. Pictured on the cover are two kids, a boy and a girl, in maroon blazers and straight-teeth smiles sitting on a bench with backpacks by their feet in a perfectly manicured courtyard, laughing way too hard for it to come off as natural.

 _Thaddeus Academy_ is printed in boldface across the top, and right underneath it in a charming, non-threatening script, _The Mid-West's leading remedial high school for at-risk adolescents._

"Hilarious," I deadpan, try to shove the stupid thing back in his direction.

Only, he doesn't take it. An apology forms over his face. It's his fingers that fumble uncomfortably now.

"You've gotta be joking me, Michael. _At-risk adolescents?"_

He shrugs helplessly. He is useless. "Take it up with Mom if you really want, but I don't think this school is a bad idea for you. There will be people there that you can talk to, and they'll be able to help you—"

"Help me with _what?"_

The way he looks at me then, I hate. Hate the way his brows form a crease between themselves, lips turn into a condescending line. Like he _knows_ me. Knows something about me that I don't.

Like he thinks I'm crazy. Like he thinks I need to be fixed. Like I need some sort of treatment that's _remedial._

I fall back flat on my bed, sling an arm across my eyes.

Could it get any worse than this? I'm not sure I want to find out.

"Holly—"

"Can I just be alone?" My throat burns. My voice chokes around the words. "Please."

He vanishes without protest, shutting the door behind him. When I open my eyes, the brochure is still very much there and very much real.

I take my new lighter to it; open the bathroom window and watch it disintegrate to flame in my fingers, scattering ash over the gorgeous goddamn sink.

 


	7. Godspeed

I.

The school secretary has long nails she drums obnoxiously over the front desk while we wait for my schedule to print. Her Chicago accent is as thick as her perfume when she lists off my classes and asks me if it all sounds correct.

They have me in all the same courses here as I was in at Hawkins High. Except for shop class. Thaddeus doesn't have that—go figure—so they placed me in some writing elective instead.

After presenting me with a handbook about a mile thick, the secretary offers a well-practiced smile and says, "Alrighty, then, Ms Wheeler. Nikki is our community service student down here at the office. She'll take you to pick up your uniform, and then show you around today."

Nikki snaps her gum and collects papers spitting out from a fax machine. Nikki, with her hair slicked back in a low bun and maroon tie to match her plaid skirt. Nikki, with tights paired disjointedly with Air Force 1s.

 _Uniforms._ It's a private school, and the students all wear _uniforms_. How did I not make the connection sooner? The laughing students in their blazers on the front of the burnt brochure flash in my mind.

Nikki looks over to me, my faded jeans, my hand-me-down jacket, my tangle of hair, and I immediately look away.

"Come with me," she says with the snap of her gum. She snatches my schedule from the secretary and leads the way.

II.

After I am assigned a locker, Nikki brings me by the nurse's office, where I am issued a uniform identical to hers.

Here's the good thing about my uniform: I get to learn how to tie a tie.

Here's the bad thing about my uniform: everything else.

I look like that chick from _Clueless,_ only she _chose_ to dress like this. But I guess it could be worse. I guess they could have me in that horrid yellow and not maroon.

On top of it all, my legs are too long, at least for the nurse's matronly standards. My plaid skirt hits me a scandalous few inches above the appropriate knee length. The nurse hums and haws and frowns. Says it'll do for now, but that she'll look into ordering some longer ones.

Personally, the skirt isn't what bothers me. It is the absence of my denim jacket that makes me feel most exposed, especially after she has me tie back my hair and any sense of self.

We miss all of first period and fifteen minutes of second over the whole event, but I was supposed to be in history, so it really isn't much of a loss.

Nikki walks me across the building, not bothering to say a word about anything we pass, and deposits me and my schedule at second period algebra.

"I'll meet you here after," she throws over her shoulder and continues down the hall.

The teacher is scrawling equations I learned two months ago across the board. I catch his eye. "Come in," he beckons, and the students turn their silent heads. "You must be Miss Wheeler. I'm Mr Fields. You may take any open seat."

I really appreciate math teachers in that way; they're so straight to the point. It's the same reason why math is my best subject. Not that I like it, I just understand it. Ask me to conjugate Spanish verbs or analyze the works of Jane Austen, and watch my eyes glaze over. Give me a sheet of algebra equations, and I'll solve each one like a puzzle. There is no guessing, only black and white, right or wrong, true or false. The answer makes sense, or it doesn't.

I slide into an empty seat in the first row, as to not make more of display of myself by parading across the classroom. I place my new backpack by my feet; Jane bought it for me yesterday, along with some pencils and a Trapper Keeper.

Mr Fields faces the board again, and something hits my shoulder. A small wad of crumpled paper bounces to the floor next to me.

I glance back, ready to cut someone with the sharpness of my glare, but all I'm met with is that kid sitting in the next row over, a few seats back. That kid from the bus, I mean. The one I'd forgotten about; assumed I'd never see again. Nathan, I think he said. His dreads are tied back low and his twine bracelet peeks out from the sleeve of his white button up. He looks at me with an eyebrow cocked, an amused smile playing at his lips, forming an expression that asks, _What are the odds?_

My annoyance dissipates, and the disbelief settles in. So he is _not,_ in fact, in college.

I guess he can read it all over my face because he points to himself and mouths, _Basket Case. Remember?_

"Mr Reis," our teacher warns. "I am sure there will be plenty of time to get to know Miss Wheeler _after_ class. Please return your attention to the front."

"Sorry, sir," he mumbles, but I can hear the smile in his voice.

III.

As promised, Nikki is by the door after class. She holds out her hand, but as I pass her my schedule Nathan comes up and snatches it.

"You're dismissed, Ramos," he tells her, his eyes glued to the page.

Nikki turns on her heel and damn near sprints down the hall, no questions asked. Nathan starts us in the other direction.

"U.S. History… lame. Algebra II with yours truly," he beams. "P.E., gross. You're in physics?"

I shrug. "Yeah, it's what I was taking at my old school. Why?"

He squints at the paper. "Says you're a junior."

"I _am_ a junior."

Nathan hums. "Ugh. Writin' seminar with Larrabee? Good luck."

"Why? Is he awful?"

" _She._ And yeah. It's the most useless class you'll ever take. A whole loada' therapeutic garbage."

"Can't wait," I mumble.

He eyes me. "So what'd _you_ do to land yourself here?"

"What do you mean?" I ask, instead of, _How do you know?_

"This is Thaddeus Academy," he spreads his arms wide to present the corridor laid out before us, with its white tile and vaulted ceilings, artistic motivational posters and unblemished lockers. 'The Mid-West's finest institution for kids who fucked up but got parents that may or may not have bought 'em outta prison."

"So everyone here is a criminal, is what you're saying."

"Most of the crimes here are borderline petty, and it's not everyone, but almost. My friend, Lisa, is just annoyin' and her parents got tired of listening to her complain, I guess. And my friend, Tim, is just gay and his parents didn't know how else to deal with it. Turned out well enough for him. Thaddeus has a zero tolerance policy on bullying and all that."

I nod, take a second to look around at all the faces in the hall, wonder to myself what kind of privileged, punished lives they could have possibly lead.

"So what was it? Bad fight with your mom? Sell your dad's gold? Got caught with illegal substances?"

"You first."

"Me?" His eyebrows lift, he brings a hand to his chest. A smile breaks over his face, proud and nostalgic. "I used to make the best fake IDs in Indiana."

"Really?"

"Damn straight. Someone snitched on me, though. Got six months probation before my parents sent me here." He nudges my elbow with his own. "Now you."

I tell him the truth. "Arson."

He laughs like I'm being sarcastic, points to a set of double doors not too far. "That's the gym. Kinda sucks you got P.E. so early, huh?" He hands my schedule back to me. "I'll meet you back here after. Godspeed, Baby Spice."

"Thanks."

The gym teacher introduces herself as Coach Carter. She issues me a uniform, assigns me a locker, asks me if I play any sports.

This is my opening to get her to like me. To tell her I run. To tell her I came first in the 200-meter sprint at regionals last year, and watch as she arches an impressed brow. This is my chance to give her a resounding yes, but instead, I say no. I'm not sure why, but I do. Maybe it's because I'm new, and either I'm going crazy or everyone keeps eyeing me. Or maybe it's because I'm wearing tights and a tie, and Coach Carter works in a profession where she is not only allowed but expected to wear sweatpants and still hold authority.

She shows no reaction. Instructs me to get changed.

A few minutes later, she calls all the girls out into the gymnasium. She guides us through the obligatory stretches, informs us that today she'll be teaching us how to shoot fouls. It makes me wonder how aggressive they're allowed to let the athletics be here.

I watch as the other girls take their turns and listen as Coach Carter offers critique to each of them.

When she calls on me, I step up to the line, dribble the basketball until I find its rhythm, and toss it clean through the net with a near silent _swoosh_. I look to Carter and await my pointers, but she just bounces another ball in my direction. Tells me to do it again. And again. And again. We keep on like this 'til all the girls grow bored of it and redirect their attention. 'Til all the boys on the other side of the gym turn away from tossing baseballs between themselves and take up interest in me. 'Til their coach comes over to stand next to mine and they begin to murmur comments between themselves.

'Til Carter doesn't bounce me the next ball, just stands there with it held between her hip and forearm.

"You think you're a smartass, don't you?"

It catches me off guard, hearing a teacher swear. "What?"

"You said you don't play basketball." Her voice is testing.

"No." Ryan does. He's really good. Best on the team good. Better at it than he is at track. I played a lot with him, his brother, and his sisters in their driveway over the summer, but that was the extent of my involvement in the game.

She narrows her eyes at me. "Try a three-pointer."

She bounces me the ball. I back up to the appropriate line. Swoosh.

The boys' coach calls over one of his students. Gives him advice based on my form.

Swoosh. Swoosh. Swoosh.

My biceps burn in the best way.

We go on like this again, Carter firing off questions as we do. "How tall are you?"

"Five eight." Five nine in the right shoes.

"What else are you good at?"

I admit, "I run fast."

"Basketball fast?"

I can't help but smirk to myself. Faster. "I'm a sprinter."

Swoosh.

"Smartass," Coach Carter says again, but this time I can hear the amusement in her voice. One of the other girls snorts or sniggers.

I line up my next shot.

"Looks like you've got yourself some talented limbs, new girl. I want you at tryouts for my team in the fall."

Swoosh. The ball bounces on the court under the hoop. My arms, now a little heavy, drop to my sides.

 _The fall._ I may as well be damned if I'm still here by then, haven't convinced my mother to move me back home and send me to Northern by then. There is a reason I don't think things through, don't think that far ahead, can't do much more than focus on one shot at a time.

It is an approach to life that works for me, and it doesn't. I didn't miss a single shot, but I still wound up here.

"Thanks, Coach, but like I said, I don't play."

IV.

When it was nice out, Summer and I used to always eat lunch on the bleachers, sitting toward the far end, away from the school. It was there that we'd chain-smoke and copy each other's homework. I'd give her half of whatever sandwich I brought and she would gossip through mouthfuls of it. No one ever bothered us.

Needless to say, my first lunch at Thaddeus is entirely different. The cafeteria is the most ridiculously dramatic thing I have ever seen in a school, all chapel arched ceilings and floor-length windows, long walnut tables with matching benches and the aroma of food that may actually be edible.

Nathan introduces me to everyone around a full table. I fail to retain a single name or face, but at least I have people to sit with.

One guy, a redhead spotted with equal parts freckles and acne, offers me a Twizzler. "It was impressive, what you did P.E. What's a girl like you do to get herself sent here?"

"Is everyone going to ask me that?" I take a bite of my candy.

Nathan's face twists into something sympathetic. "People wanna know who they're dealin' with."

"How could they not?" asks the redhead. "This is _Thaddeus_ Academy. As in Judas Thaddeus, patron saint of lost causes. If we're all so completely hopeless, we might as well be hopeless together."

"Yeah? What makes you so hopeless?" I ask him.

"That's the thing, Baby—" he glances from me to Nathan. "You said _Baby_ , right?"

"It's actually Miss Spice, to you," Nathan corrects through a mouthful of peanut butter and jelly. It makes me laugh.

"Miss Spice," the redhead continues, "the most imperative thing for you to remember here is that I am _not_ hopeless. None of us are. That's just how _they_ want us to see ourselves because it works for their agenda. The trick is to not let what goes on out here start affecting who you are in here," he taps two fingers against his temple.

"To answer your question, for real," Nathan jerks his chin in reference to the redhead, "Tony's in for grand theft auto."

Tony swats the idea away with his hand. "I prefer the term 'joyriding.'"

"He stole a nice car and drove it around like a Hot Wheel."

Tony frowns at Nathan. "It's not _stealing_ if the car lives in your garage."

"Don't let him trick you, new girl," interjects some other kid eavesdropping nearby. "He totalled his dad's Jaguar."

Tony smirks at me. "Guilty."

Nathan outs me next. "Baby said she's here for arson."

The evesdropping kid chuckles. Sizes me up with new, amused eyes. "Who pissed you off enough?"

A smile spreads slowly across Tony's face. He nods at me approvingly. "Badass."

I take another bite of my Twizzler and can't help but smirk to myself. If there is anything the Wheelers are not, it's badass.

V.

Writing seminar is my last class of the day. My teacher, Mrs Larrabee, assigns me a composition notebook. She tells me to write "my story" and shows me where to put it at the end of the period.

The whole time she is explaining it, I only think of how right Nathan is. This is probably the most useless class I'll ever take. Very _for-the-birds_.

"Don't worry," she assures. "I won't read it unless you ask me to. My job isn't to grade you on your experiences, it's to help get them out of you and onto the paper, so that you may reflect on them, move past them, grow and learn from them."

But I don't buy into that. Or believe her about the whole not reading it thing.

So I do what I need to do in order to pass. I write about us.

About my mother, and how I baked cookies with her at Christmastime. She lined the metal sheet with rows of dough, and I sprinkled red and green sanding sugar on top. Carols played over the radio.

I write about my father, and how he held me in his lap on the Lay-Z-Boy and we watched Indiana Jones. He fell asleep halfway through, and I snacked on the last of the popcorn.

I write about my sister, and how I sat in the backseat of her boyfriend's car. The three of us bounced our heads along to the music. She looked back at me from the passenger seat and grinned. Jonathan turned the volume up and hummed along.

I write about my brother, and how he taught me to ride a bike. I insisted that he let go, that I could do it on my own, so he did. I fell damn near instantly, scraping up my shins, but Michael still believed in me anyway. Had me get right back up and try again.

I do not write about the tragedy Mrs Larrabee wants. I do not write about how they left. I do not write about Boston or Chicago or New York. My mother's empty house or my father's dingy apartment.

I write about us, as we were when we were still the Wheelers, a family beautifully all-American in every way.

At the end of class, I pile my journal with the rest and hope she finds what she's searching for in the happier stories, too.


	8. Buzzkill

I.

Michael offered to have his assistant pick me up from school, but that's probably the most ridiculous offer I've ever heard. I take a map and the public bus instead.

I sit toward the back, tighten my jacket around my torso, grateful to have my regular clothes back from the nurse.

There aren't many other people on for two thirty on a Thursday. There is an older gentleman with his grandson. He reads the newspaper, while the young boy smiles to himself at the comic strips.

There is a woman in business attire perched at the edge of her front seat. She smooths her dark hair back into a low bun.

There are two kids in Thaddeus uniforms, a boy and a girl. I had stood at the bus stop with them, the three of us straggling behind after the last bell rang, me to finalize everything with the front office, them for God knows what. We didn't speak a word to each other.

There is a guy with a backwards ball cap and glasses that remind me of Phil Callahan, though he can't be much older than me. He has earbuds in, and his dark hands quietly drum a beat against the fabric of his acid-washed jeans, his foot bouncing along in rhythm. He catches me watching, turns up the corners of his lips, stiffly polite. We both look away.

I wonder where they are all going. I wonder how they all got here with me.

II.

No one else is home when I get back to Michael's. I punch in the code to disarm the security alarm, dump my bag by the front door, sip on a Sprite from the fridge.

Upstairs, I turn on the shower to scalding, scrub the day off my skin. I watch my soap bubbles and dignity swirl down, down, down the drain.

I consider, for the millionth time, calling Ryan.

I decide, for the millionth time, against it.

It is hard enough to be here without hearing his voice.

No matter how many times I try and force them away, my mind continues to wander to thoughts of him. I need to distract myself, and this shower isn't cutting it. It takes me a full decade to rinse the conditioner from the lengths of my hair, but when I'm finished I hop out, step into comfier clothes.

I go downstairs alone and wander the first floor alone and sit on the cold, leather sectional alone and wonder if this is how Karen must feel now, all alone.

Everything is so silent, so still, it makes me self conscious of my breathing.

My brother's TV is tucked into the corner, making way for the fireplace that commands the attention of the room. If Ryan and I were to curl up, we'd probably both fit in it. Summer, too, she's so small. Bookshelves are set into one of the walls, lined with novels and movies and CDs up high, and Charlie's toys down low. It seems she's set up a doll's bedroom in one of them.

It isn't the cover of the book on the coffee table—the image of a sun setting over a lake, the bursting hues of orange and yellow and pink, the two girls in silhouette linking arms on the shore—that catches my eye, but rather the words on it.

 _This Isn't You: Coping with Loss Without Losing Yourself_ , by Nancy Byers, MD.

What the hell? Am I really this far out of the loop? Since when did she write a book?

I flip the hardcover over, and sure enough, a picture of my sister is printed on the back alongside a brief biography:

 _Nancy Byers, MD., is a trauma psychiatrist and grief_ counselor _. Byers received her BS in Psychology from Fordham University, and her doctorate in Neurobiology and Behavior from Colombia University, where she now teaches as an adjunct professor. She lives in New York, New York with her husband and son. This Isn't You is her first published volume._

I exhale. All that, the framework of her new life, Chris and Jonathan and Manhattan, I have heard before.

Still, I find myself curious. Why would she write a book and not want to share it with her family? Well, with the exception of her brother, I guess.

I flip through some pages, taking in nothing, until I reach the front again. Printed on the first page is an inscription:

 _"It is so much darker when a light goes out than it would have been if it had never shone."_  
_—John Steinbeck, The Winter of Our Discontent_

 _In loving memory of Barbra Holland, for being my light._  
_1967-1983_

Underneath she signed the copy personally in neat, black uppercase: _TO MIKE AND EL AFTER EVERYTHING —NANCY_

EL.

 _EL._ Who the fuck is EL? Is that someone's name, or someone's initials? Is it Mike's assistant or something? And after what?

And who is Barbra Holland? How have I never heard of her before, if she was that damn important to Nancy?

But then again, when's the last time Nancy bothered to talk to me? When's the last time I tried to reach out to her?

The sad truth of it is that I'd know these things if Nancy and I wanted to be in each other's lives.

Something in my heart stings for the loss of the sister I should have. I toss the book back on the coffee table and it lands with a satisfying thump.

III.

Later on, I sit with Charlie on that gigantic sectional and we watch Mister Rodgers' Neighborhood.

More accurately, she watches it, drinking juice from her sunflower sippy cup, and I'm there making sure she doesn't crawl off the couch or get struck by a meteor crashing through the ceiling or something else equally devastating while Jane washes dishes in the kitchen.

I try to focus on the show, to ponder how it could still possibly be on the air, instead of looking at the book on the coffee table.

There is a knock on Mister Rodgers' door right before our telephone starts ringing.

"Holly?" Jane calls from the other room. "Would you mind getting that for me?"

I let it ring once more before I lift myself from the sofa and grab the cordless on the end table. "Hello?"

"Baby." His voice is breathless, relieved, and I grow conscious of my own, or rather the lack thereof.

I glance back to Charlie, who is completely engrossed by the television, entirely unharmed by any impending disaster. I round the corner into the hallway and sit at the bottom of the staircase, knuckles white around my grip on the bannister.

"Hey," I don't raise my voice much louder than a whisper, for fear of it sounding weak. "How'd you get this number?"

"I called your house. Karen gave it to me." Ryan sounds almost apologetic. "I wanted to make sure you were okay. I hadn't heard anything…"

"I'm okay." At least I will be. I think. I hope. "How are things with you?"

"Oh, you know. Same shit, different day…" he says, but I know him well enough to hear the rough edge of a lie.

"Tell me," I say, mostly because I don't trust my own voice.

"Well, school is… school. Coach is kinda super pissed they kicked you out. Went on and on to me about how Murphy should've talked to him first or whatever. Says there's no chance we'll make it to regionals now."

He says this to cheer me up, so I don't bother reminding him that Missy Allen is damn near as fast as me, that she'll carry the team to regionals, no problem. My eyelids sink shut and I let a tear slip silently down my cheek. I don't even bother wiping it away.

He continues on, tells me about his sisters. How Chloe is sick for the millionth time since starting daycare, how yesterday Sophie was one of the only freshmen at Hawkins High to be invited to showcase her work in some art exposition. How the rest of them haven't gotten any less preciously irritating in the past few days. He tells me about his brother, Jordan, and how he keeps asking what time I'm coming over. He tells me about how Summer keeps calling him, wondering if he's heard anything from me and that I should call her—she's getting antsy. That she has started up at Northern and wants to let me know it is even worse than we've always made fun of.

He asks me if I have started school yet.

I swallow hard. "Yeah. Today, actually."

"That's good," he says and it sounds a bit hollow. "Make any friends?"

"Sure…" I say, but I don't think I'll ever be able to call up that kid Tony to tell him my mother is in one of her moods, have him come by at twelve on a school night and take me to hang out in the parking lot of the McDonald's two towns over, eating drive-thru chicken nuggets with our feet up on the dashboard and laughing about stupid shit 'til the sun begins to hue the sky, like Summer used to. God knows Nikki would never, and it was kind of Nathan to take over for her, but I don't think he would ever endure the irregularly scheduled dinners with my father, especially not the ones when he'd have one beer too many and slur on about my mother as if she weren't my mother and occasionally call me Nancy, sometimes even Karen, like Ryan always volunteered to sit through.

Sure, we can be friendly. We can share stories over Twizzlers and laugh together at lunch, but friends, true friends, are the ones that are there when the going gets tough. Thing is, the going is tough, and I've had to leave my true friends behind, and that's just not the kind of thing you can replace in a day.

The silence swallows us whole. I try and count the seconds, but they blur together and marry into minutes.

Still, it is nice to know Ryan is waiting at the other end of the line. I haven't left him too far behind, in this way.

So I ask, "You still there?" and it comes out so small.

"Always," he says, and I believe him.

IV.

I think one of the reasons I started liking Ryan as much as I did was because of how he was with his siblings. He was the oldest of six—two boys and four girls—and nearly as much of a parent to the littlest ones as his mother and father were. They were all so close, it seemed almost bizarre.

Like that time, last summer, I was so impressed when Ryan and I loaded them all into Mrs Frazier's minivan and drove an hour to the amusement park. Our gameplan was to operate on the buddy system. Ryan would be in charge of Chloe, I would be in charge of Maeve, and Sophie would take Brooke and Jordan on all the rides they were now tall enough for.

The kids ended up all silently agreeing to stick together, instead. It was as if they had formed their own pack, found strength in their numbers. They all waited patiently for a few of them to get off a ride before we moved onto the next. Together.

Jordan ended up being the one who volunteered to push Chloe around in the stroller. Brooke ended up being the one walking around with Maeve wrapped around her like a koala. Sophie ended up being the one to suggest she take all four younger ones on the Ferris wheel and then to play a few carnival games so Ryan and I could go on some of the roller coasters the rest were either too little or too scared for. And Ryan ended up being the one to say no, we should all take the Ferris wheel together.

So we did. We squeezed ourselves into one car, crammed our legs in the space between the two benches, bumped bony elbows, held littlest kids on laps. And we laughed the whole way to the top about some things we saw below or some nonsense that came from Chloe or some jokes they'd had between themselves for years.

Afterwards, we headed down to ring toss and balloon darts, and Ryan knocked down enough cans on his first try to win Brooke one of the Beanie Babies she'd fallen in love with.

And the way she grinned at him then—like he was her hero, like if there was any one thing she could always be sure of, it was that—and the way he winked at her—like it's just what older siblings do, like he expected absolutely nothing from her in return—and tugged playfully on the end of her pigtail braid to punctuate the point, was the kind of thing I had only ever seen on television shows. The kind of bond I never had with Michael or Nancy.

V.

That evening, Michael and his cell phone return home. It rings through the living room as he greets Charlie and me, rings through the kitchen as he kisses his wife. Rings all the way up the stairs until he finally takes the damn call on the third floor.

I never pictured Michael as being someone important in his job. Since when do physicists face this kind of urgency? In the life I imagined for him, no one bothered calling this much unless the world was ending.

By the time he comes back down, an hour has passed. I have taken up position on the floor after Charlie insisted I play trains with her. Jane has perched herself on the sectional's armrest, watching us while she waits for the oven timer.

He runs down the steps to open the door before the person on the other side has a chance to ring the bell.

"Must be Kali," Jane tells me.

Michael and his guest murmur in the entryway before he leads them straight up to the third story.

"Who's Kali?" I ask once they're safely out of earshot.

"She works with Mike." The way Jane's voice lifts toward the end hints there is something more to that truth.

I let it slide. Leave myself out of the loop yet again.

It isn't nearly as long before Michael and Kali come back down.

"She's in here," says Michael, just before they round the corner into the den.

"Jane," Kali's face is aglow. Her hair, grown to her shoulders, is thick and unruly. She tucks it behind her ears. Her inky eyes, rimmed with black kohl, gleam as she wraps an arm around Jane's shoulders and squeezes her into a hug. By the looks of it, she can't be much older than Nancy.

"How are you?" Jane smiles prettily. "Is everything okay?"

"Yes, everything is great." She pats the shouldered briefcase resting at her side. "Just picking up some files."

I recognize that voice. The accent I can't quite place. It is the woman I overheard Michael speaking to when I snuck up to the third floor. It has to be.

Charlie is on her feet, waddling over to Kali, arms raised in the air. Kali obliges, scooping her up.

"And how are you, Charlene?" she asks her.

"Come play," Charlie insists.

Kali frowns. "I wish I could, but it's turned out to be a very busy week. I have a lot of work to get done."

Charlie pouts.

Kali turns to me, smiles politely. "You must be Holly."

I nod. Remember how she only found out about me the other day.

"Kali Prasad." she extends her free hand, her fingers tawny and slim, her nails polished deep plum, and I reach up to shake.

"You're Michael's… assistant?" I guess. Was he important enough to have more than one employee? Was she the one Michael would've forced to pick me up from Thaddeus?

She smirks at the idea. "No, no. I've got far too much power for that."

"I'm the just the brains," Michael adds, "Kali's the execution."

"Your words, not mine."

"Stay for dinner?" Jane asks her.

Kali sets Charlie back down. "I wish I could. Like I said, it has turned out to be a busy week."

She and Michael share a glance, so quick I would have missed it had I blinked. Jane nods, seeming to understand. Something left unsaid lingers in the air.


	9. Wannabe

I.

We have another drink and Ryan drives us home. The roads are frosted slick and I light myself a cigarette. It is impossible to make out what lies ahead and Summer sings a lighthearted tune.

She stumbles over the words. The car stumbles over the curb.

At once we are floating, we are flying,

we are

weightless,

suspended,

capsized in

midair.

We are hitting the ground so hard I feel it in my teeth.

We are wreckage, we are ruin, we are strapped in upside down.

The smoke stings my nose before it can my eyes. Summer screams. I turn to see her but the back seat is a wall of blaze.

I look to Ryan. His dark eyes smolder like twin embers. His skin succumbs and blisters and breaks. "What did you do, Baby?" he crescendos. "What did you do?"

I open my mouth to speak and choke on the fumes. I force the door open and roll out into the clean air, the cool grass.

I lay there, sprawled out like a star, and watch the smoke rise from the car's mechanic underbelly. I lay there, so close to the disaster I have caused, but I have left them behind nonetheless. There is nothing I can do for them now.

I am the sharpest strike of lightning. I am the bluest part of the flame.

The only one I can still save is myself.

An alarm rings out in the distance. An ambulance, maybe. A firetruck, I hope.

But it is only my clock, glowing red on the bedside table of my room at Michael's. The details of the dream fog over with consciousness, though my heart still pumps adrenaline and my tongue seems to taste faintly metallic.

I wonder if Nancy wrote anything about nightmares in her book. Whether or not she motioned it as a side effect of grieving a life once lived, or maybe mourning one never had.

II.

When the bus pulls up to the stop and opens its doors to welcome me, I waste no time feeding the meter and beelining for the back.

"Baby." Someone reaches for my wrist as I pass. Nathan grins up at me, one earbud in, the other dangling down in front of his shirt. "What's with you and busses?"

"Are you stalking me?" I ask. It comes out more seriously than I'd intended.

He releases me, shifts back in his seat, arches a brow. " _Me?_ Stalk _you?"_

"Take a seat, miss," the bus driver barks, impatient. I have to remember to smooth my stupid school skirt under me as I sit next to Nathan.

"Last time I checked," he continues, "I was on here first, which would make _you_ the stalker and _me_ the stalkee."

"Last time _I_ checked, I was on the bus first last time. When we met."

"Maybe so, but aren't _you_ the one that showed up at _my_ school?"

I am left without a comeback. A smile takes over his victorious face, showing off the dimples beneath his eyes.

"You live around here?" I deflect, shifting my view to watch the city pass out the window.

He nods. "Yeah. Technically it's my brother's place, but he puts up with me. You?"

"Same," I say, but I'm really not in the mood to discuss my brother's house or his family much more than that. Though, now that I think of it, I'm reminded, "Our school has a library, right? It's gotta. I want to look something up."

Nathan nods. "I can show you at lunch, if you want."

I want to tell him I'd be fine finding it on my own, but the hallways all look exactly the same in that school, and I'm not confident I actually would.

He starts chuckling at something; a joke he'd made in his own head.

"What?" I ask, wanting to be in on it, too.

"Here." He bites down a smile and passes me his other earbud. "Someone wrote a song for you."

I bring the music to my ear, half expecting the beat of _Ice Ice Baby_ everyone found it hilarious to sing to me in Hawkins, half expecting the chorus of _Wannabe_ since this is Nathan I'm talking to, and am pleasantly relieved to hear neither.

Instead comes Beck's familiar hook:

_Soy un perdedor / I'm a loser baby, so why don't you kill me?_

III.

At the junkyard in town lived a decrepit school bus, long out of service, with windows boarded up by pieces of mismatched plywood and sheet metal, a few seats ripped out, and a janky ladder poking through the roof's emergency exit, as if someone had turned it into some kind of fort. One of us had named her Matilda and she was so old, in fact, that it appeared once upon a time my brother had etched his initials into the back of one of her vinyl seats. Every time I traced my fingers over the letters I wondered if he had anything to do with the renovations, or if he and his friends simply hung out there, like we did.

Most Friday nights we'd hike up to visit Matilda in small groups, for no reason other than it was Hawkins and there was not much better to do. Someone would bring a few beers and we'd climb up the ladder to the roof, let the chill of the metal seep through our jeans, and watch the sun tuck itself away behind the center of town.

I'd never loved anyplace more.

And I remember now that one time, not too long ago, Summer and I built a small fire of sticks in the grass not too far from the back wheel well. We warmed aour bodies around it in the late September evening and warmed our insides with the 40 ounce brought by Mark McVries.

Ryan made some joke that had Summer laughing so hard around the lip of the bottle she spilt all over her _D.A.R.E._ shirt.

"Oh _shit."_

McVries hunched over laughing. I eased the bottle away. Ryan snapped at her to get away from the open flame.

"Okay, okay… Jeez." She pulled herself to her feet and backed away.

McVries tugged off his hoodie and offered it to her, and she changed right out in the open.

"Better?" she asked, moving to stuff the alcohol-soaked shirt in her bag and fiddle with the battery powered boombox resting on Matilda's steps.

She cranked the volume higher. Ryan had put in Weezer's new album.

_Sometimes I push too hard / Sometimes you fall and skin your knee / I never meant to do all I've done to you / Please, baby, say it's not too late_

"Baby, why is every song about you?" Summer asked, reclaiming her spot by the fire.

"People write songs about Summer," Mark offered.

She pouted. "Yeah, the _season."_

"The hell do you mean every song's _about_ me?"

A crease formed between Ryan's brows. "You've never noticed?"

"Noticed what?" I asked, but he was already on his feet, moving to the boombox and skipping ahead a few tracks.

He told me to listen. To wait for the chorus, so we all did.

_But I'm shaking at your touch, I like you way too much / My baby, I'm afraid I'm falling for you_

A funny warmth spread through me as I listened to it continue into the second verse.

_Holy moly, baby, wouldn't you know it? / Just as I was busting loose / I gotta turn in my rockstar card / and get fat and old with you_

"It's not just Weezer," he said, "it's _everybody._ Everybody writes songs about you."

Summer nodded.

I sat stupidly shaking my head. To me, _Baby_ was only ever short for Baby Holly, an emblem of brattiness and naivety. Never was I the Baby that was soft and sweet and pretty. The Baby people write songs about.

But I supposed, sitting by that bus, we could pretend we were whatever wanted to be. We could be young and foolish forever, playing music loud enough to mistake it for our heartbeats and laughing so hard our ribs begged us to stop, and that could be okay. That could worth writing songs about.

IV.

When the lunch bell chimes, Nathan is standing outside my English class to bring me to the library, as he'd promised. It is tucked so discreetly back into one of the far corners of the building that I never would have found it on my own.

I have to sign in with the librarian in order to use a computer. She is a heavier set woman with dark hair pulled back low. She grins sweetly at me, likely happy to have someone interested in the school's resources for once.

Nathan goes to browse the stacks, and since I am doubtful searching _EL_ will give me any useful results, I type the name _Barbra Holland_ into AltaVista.

The first result is an old obituary posted to some newspaper archive. I skim through it, but it doesn't reveal much. I keep digging.

There are tons of news articles about her. I read on about funeral arrangements and candle lightings until I stumble across something that leaves my jaw agape.

The black and white school portrait of a smiling girl centers the poster. The word _MISSING_ , big and bold and begging for attention, stretches across the top.

_HAVE YOU SEEN THIS PERSON?_

_BARBARA HOLLAND_

_Last seen on November 8, 1983, at approximately 10:00 p.m._

_16, Red Hair, Brown Eyes, 5'9"_

_Last seen on Oak Hill Rd wearing a blue coat, plaid shirt, and glasses._

_Please contact Hawkins Police immediately with any information._

This is a nightmare in itself. A thing like this doesn't happen in a place like Hawkins. Why don't people talk about this? Why isn't this every parent's cautionary tale? How did an entire town forget so quickly?

Further down in my search results is an old clip of a newscast.

I shift in my seat and find Nathan hasn't wandered far, thumbing through the pages of a hardback from a shelf nearby. I whisper-shout his name.

"Did you know hippo sweat's _red?"_ He shakes his head at the page rather than look up, as if it were ridiculous that he's gone his whole life without anyone telling him this.

"I need your headphones."

He shelves the hippopotamus book, searches through his backpack, and comes over to plug the headphones into my computer speaker. Asks, "What's this?"

He takes the earbud I pass him and crouches next to me. I press play.

A newswoman tells us, "Under mounting pressure, several high-ranking members from the U.S. Department of Energy have admitted involvement in the death and cover-up of Hawkins resident Barbara Holland, who died of exposure to an experimental chemical asphyxiant, which had leaked from the grounds of the lab."

"Why are you watchin' this?" asks Nathan.

"We sent our own April Kline to Hawkins to speak to residents. Residents who told us they thought they lived in a safe town. The kind of town where, they say, nothing ever happens."

Phil Callahan is the first face to pop up on screen after that. He looks so young, so much like Summer, though he could do without the moustache. He scrambles for a statement about how unfortunate the situation is, but how the loved ones of Barbara Holland will now be able to properly grieve.

That's when a clip of Nancy appears, and for once we are the same age. Her sweater pale pink, her hair permed, her eyes wide and brows peaked. She talks about how Barb was her best friend, and her hope that she can rest peacefully now.

"That's my sister." I murmur without really meaning to, but I find myself feeling for her, for once. I cannot imagine losing Summer, and in a way that is so brutal, so public and permanaent.

"You're from Hawkins?" Nathan asks, as if he's familiar.

"You know it?"

Nathan nods. Stares longingly at the screen. "My brother's from there. You know, before we got him."

I remember now how he'd told me they were both adopted. He'd made some joke about the whole thing at the time, but now I can almost see the cogs turning in his mind, trying to figure something out for himself.

"Think I knew him?" I ask, half-kidding.

He shakes his head, his face the most serious I've ever seen it. Which, come to think of it, doesn't mean much. Come to think of it, I hardly know Nathan.

Some woman, maybe mid-thirties, makes the next on statement on screen. Exasperated, she asks when this will all end. This news, following what happened to Bob Newby, has her questioning who is next, and when she can feel safe again.

 _Bob Newby._ "I know that name." Where do I know that name?

Nathan studies me carefully, a crease of concern burrowing between his brows. Maybe he's realizing I'm a basket case, too.

The bell rings. I close the browser, Nathan takes his headphones. We walk to class, the sullen silence foreign between us.

V.

The writing journals are in the exact same order we left them in yesterday, seemingly untouched, but that doesn't necessarily mean she hasn't read them.

Today, Mrs. Larrabee has written a prompt on the board for us to follow, or not: What do you fear? How do you face it?

It is intended to be a loaded question; there are a lot of things to fear.

I fear the dark, sometimes, but maybe it isn't the dark as much as it is what I cannot see.

I fear eternity, but I fear death, too. I fear girls who disappear twice; once when their own town kills them and tries to cover it up, and again when that same town seemingly forgets it ever happened.

I fear being forgotten, left behind like that. By Ryan or Summer or the Wheelers.

I fear Christmas lights, apparently, and monsters that hide in walls instead of under beds, but who the hell wouldn't?

I fear the frost and the fire. I fear being brave and taking the blame.

But I do not want to write about any of it.

So instead, I doodle a picture. I was never meant to be the next Da Vinci; I merely scratch rough shapes with a blue ballpoint pen, but in it is Summer and Ryan and me.

Except, in it, you cannot see Summer and Ryan because Summer and Ryan are in the car, and the car is flipped upside down, and the car is consumed by flames.

And, in it, I am splayed out in the grass nearby, a fallen star, watching everything go up in smoke and everything vanish into the night sky.

In it, I am so close and yet they are so far behind. I have left them behind.

In it, it is all my fault.

In it, a siren blares but it is for something else, and I hope that something else is Barbara Holland, that it is not too late for her, that someone tried to save her because, in it, there is no use in saving us; it is much too late.

And, in it, I am left behind, too. No one is coming to clean up the mess I have made, and no one is coming to save me. It is a nightmare in itself, and I am afraid.

I am afraid.

I am afraid, but I do not want to be.

The only way out is through. The only way I can face it is to save myself.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you all have a safe and happy Fourth of July, if you celebrate, and enjoy Stranger Things 3. I want to note that because I've had this entire plot laid out for a while now, this story will be ignoring anything that happens in season three, so if you like to take your time watching the show, there will be no spoilers here!


	10. Backbite

I.

I would be lying if I said my sister's brother-in-law is someone who crosses my mind often. I would also be lying if I said I can remember the exact time I saw him last, or where he's living now, or what he's even doing with his life.

Nevertheless, I find Will Byers there, sitting in my brother's living room after I get back from a run down Navy Pier early that Saturday evening. And while I know he and Michael were friends long before Nancy and Jonathan got together, it still catches me off guard.

"Hey," he says, like he hadn't expected to see me.

"Hey," I say the exact same way.

Oddly enough, I notice his new haircut before I do the new breathing tubes strung to one of those oxygen tank backpacks by his feet. The circles under his eyes are a permanent shade of purple to match the heavy knit sweater he has on, the collar of a button up shirt poking out from underneath, and the bones of his face and wrists are much more prominent than I remember.

Will has always been sick, but this is the first time he has ever looked it.

"What are you doing here?" we both ask at the same time.

A smile spreads easily across his face, and he looks much more like himself again. "I was just in the area. Thought I'd stop by."

"Auntie!" Charlie calls from the floor, and it almost sounds like a sneeze. "Look."

She is splaying stickers shaped like stars and planets over a piece of purple construction paper. _"Very_ pretty," I tell her.

"She's redesigning the sky," Will explains as Jane breezes in.

"Yeah," Jane agrees, handing Will a glass of water and settling in beside him. "And the whole thing will revolve around her."

Charlie slaps a crecent moon into place.

I head upstairs for a shower.

"Dinner will be ready in about fifteen minutes, Hols," Michael calls from the kitchen after my retreating footfalls.

II.

The times Karen and I sat and ate meals together grew fewer and farther between as the years went on. One of the most recent I remember was when we drove out to Bloomington to have dinner with her latest boyfriend so that I could meet his son.

She really knew how to pick them, my mother, and for the most part Peter was no exception. He was about a decade younger than her; a widow who worked at a call center in the city for some washing machine company and wore a wiry moustache and his Gap polo tucked into his Gap jeans, but he was totally enraptured by my mother. He was awkward and went on nervous tangents if you let him, but at least he didn't talk down to Karen like Rich and he didn't have a wife and family she didn't know about like Harris.

He was no knight in shining armor, that Peter, but at least he tried to be. That evening, he took us out to a pizza place with a jukebox and a couple arcade games in the back so he would seem like fun, but if I had to guess it was probably the best he could afford for a table of four on his customer support salary.

Karen pretended she didn't mind. Put on her good bra and brick red lipstick anyway, and Peter insisted we order pepperoni, and the two carried on conversation like their children weren't even there, and although I hadn't spoken a word to the kid beyond my obligatory, "Hi," I could tell Pete Junior was getting sick of it about as fast as I was. He was around high school age, like me, and had an owl's face, with his sharp nose and watchful eyes.

I asked him if he was any good at pool, and he glanced over to the unoccupied table across the restaurant. He nodded once and that was good enough for me. We stood and I could tell Karen had never been happier with a decision I'd made in years. She even had us wait as she looked to Peter expectantly, and he fished us a few quarters from his front pocket.

"Your mom seems nice," Pete Junior said as we walked away, but it sounded like a formality. "My dad says you have a brother and a sister?"

"Yeah. They're a lot older."

"That must be cool. I always wanted siblings."

I didn't bother mentioning that I had always wanted siblings, too.

I fed the quarters into the table and he racked the balls it released. He insisted I break, and I sunk two stripes before he did three solids.

As I lined up my next shot, I tried to recall everything Ted had taught me about pool during one of those seasons he decided to remember he was supposed to be my father. I put a little too much force behind it anyway, and the cue ball went rolling into the pocket right after the eleven.

"So what grade are you in, Holly?" Pete Junior asked conversationally, positioning the scratched cue on the maroon wool.

"No one calls me that," I said too sharply before I could think it through.

He gave me a lingering look with those wide, attentive eyes, but didn't say anything. Just took his shot.

Thing is, I wasn't trying to be mean, I was trying to be honest. I was trying to maintain as much distance as we could. Because no matter how much I didn't hate Peter, or even his Junior, I knew my mother. Even the decent ones she'd get bored of after a while; she always did. It wasn't anything personal, she always had her heart set on the next best thing, always making room, getting rid of something.

I just never expected there to come a day when it would be my turn.

III.

Over dinner, Michael and Will and Jane laugh and I am reminded of all the times I heard the sound float up from my mother's basement.

There had been a point when I desperately wanted to be in on their plans. They seemed so cool to me then, my brother and his friends, but he'd always remind me that I was just a little kid. I wish that were still the case.

Now, I finally sit as a silent observer of their clan. They joke about old times, wear nostalgia like a proud badge of adulthood, and I make crosshatches in my mashed potatoes with the tines of my fork.

This time there is no Pete Junior to escape to the pool table with. There is only Charlie, munching happily on bits of grilled chicken and steamed carrots.

"So," says Will, "how are things over at Newby?"

 _Newby._ My ears perk up.

"Good," says Michael. "We keep ourselves busy."

Michael's company—Robert Newby, LLC—comes rushing back to me. _That_ is where I have heard the name before. Does Michael know him from Hawkins?

I remember that woman's voice from the news report, begging to know who is next after what happened to Bob Newby. What could that have been? Would Michael know?

Again, I never expected this kind of urgency, this level of danger, from a couple of physicists.

IV.

After dinner, it is Michael's turn to watch Charlie with Will in the living room, and I go to help Jane with the dishes.

She turns on the faucet, but the spray head malfunctions, douses us with water. My hands fly up over my face, and the squeals we let out are borderline embarrassing. She twists off the water and our cries melt into laughter. I grab the counter for support.

"Oh, my god." She tosses her head back.

"You're _drenched._ "

"So are you!"

"What the hell happened?" Michael rounds the corner into the kitchen, grabs a roll of paper towels.

"I don't know..."

"The sprayer—" I tried to explain, inspecting it.

Michael starts laying down paper towels over the puddle on the floor. Jane thanks him and reaches to help. "Shit. My watch."

"Did it get wet?" I ask, stupidly.

She nods, tries to twist the tiny dial on the side.

"Can't you put it in rice or something?"

"Rice?" she arches a brow at me.

"Yeah. Dry rice. Doesn't it absorb the water?" I look to Michael for confirmation that I'm not crazy.

He nods. "She's right. It might a day or two, but worth a shot." He picks up the sopping paper towels. "We're gonna need more."

He gets up, goes to grab another roll from the basement.

Jane sighs, takes off her watch, reaches for the pantry cabinet, and that is when I see it. In the watch's place, on the inside of her wrist right where the clasp should lay, is a tiny tattoo. From here, it looks like numbers, and I can barely make them out: _011_.

It is jarring and, at the same time, a little impressive. "Since when does Jane Wheeler have a tattoo?"

"Oh," she says, lays her flat hand over her heart, hiding the inside of her wrist, and reaches for rice with the other. "It was a drunk, stupid mistake I made in college."

It's a lie, I can tell. My air of impression disintegrates.

The Jane Wheeler I know is excruciatingly un-spontaneous. Anything but careless. Intoxicated or not, she has never been one to not first consider every possible outcome, or to brush something off so casually as a _stupid mistake._

V.

After Jane puts Charlie to bed, after Will says he better head out, after I get back up to my bedroom, I try and make sense of all this senseless information.

I steal a couple loose-leaf pages from my backpack, write down everything I knew to be true before I came here:

How Karen sang Christmas carols and baked sugar cookies.

How Ted groaned as if I were getting big as he pulled me into his lap on the Lay-Z-Boy.

How Nancy giggled when she looked back at me from the passenger seat of her boyfriend's car.

How Michael helped me up, lifted my bike, and made me try again.

How Michael brought Jane around for as long as I can remember.

How Jane brought herself around, even after Michael left for college.

How Nancy hardly ever came back.

How I, in the midst of it all, cannot remember when exactly we decided to stop being the Wheelers.

How the child support checks waited on the kitchen counter.

How the wine bottles filled the recycling.

The infrequent visits, the phone calls, the holiday cards, the apathy.

How old my mother looked when she said, "I am very disappointed in you, Holly."

How burnt out she looked when I realized this wasn't the first time she had considered sending me to Chicago.

On a second page, I write everything I know to be true now: Michael and Jane live in a three-story brownstone. The first floor is for living, the second floor is for sleeping, and the third floor is for working. Jane is a librarian at a public school, and Michael speaks vaguely of his research, but they look like they have a lot of money. They look like they have everything. They have Nancy's book, even, signed _TO MIKE AND EL._ Nancy was best friends with Barbara Holland. Barbara Holland went missing and Barbara Holland was killed. Summer's father worked the case. Something happened to Bob Newby, and now Michael works for his company. Will Byers looks sick. Will Byers _is_ sick, always has been. Jane has a stupid mistake of a tattoo, and she hides it.

None of it connects, and I can't help but hope Mrs Larrabee is onto something. Maybe, if I pour it all out of me and onto the page, give it tangibility in the word, answers will follow.

Maybe, if I tape the papers to the back wall of my otherwise useless closet, surround them with sticky notes of questions, I'll learn to reflect on them, learn to start asking them the right way, and the shape of the truth will emerge between the secrets and lies.


	11. Dollhouse

I.

All it takes is a spark.

The Great Chicago Fire, as told by my history teacher bright and early Monday morning, began on the evening of October 8, 1871. It enveloped the city's southwest side—a tinderbox of wind and wooden facades—and by the time it was all said and done, on October 10, 1871, the fire had swallowed thousands of buildings, hundreds of lives.

No one knows how it started.

There are many, many theories, some more popular than others, but I'm not sure knowing would make any difference. The fire was a result of its environment, relentless in its consumption of Chicago. All it took was a spark to crumble a city, but it was never a single person's fault.

The mindlessness of one affected the flammability of another, affected the lumber structure of a neighbor. The wind blew by and cast it all down the street much faster than the people could carry water.

All it took was a spark, but pointing blame would have never made any difference after the fact. Either way, the only thing they could do was rebuild.

Only this time, they resurrected the city in stone.

II.

Silver was never really my color, but its the one painted on my fingernails, anyway. Nail polish was never much of my thing, either, but I found a bottle of Jane's in one of the downstairs bathrooms and figured it would clash perfectly with the warm tones of my Thaddeus uniform.

I absentmindedly chip away at this small rebellion while I doze off from the film my English teacher decided to show today—some recording of a college production of _The Crucible_ , which would be kinda cool if it was the new movie version with Daniel Day-Lewis, or if everyone who was accused of witchcraft was burnt at the stake, but all the scrawny theater majors are hung offstage instead.

Elizabeth Proctor is trying to convince her not-Day-Lewis husband to tell everyone his mistress, Abigail Williams, is a liar and a fraud—as if not-Day-Lewis didn't have his own fair share of secrets—when our teacher slips out of the room and returns a few moments later with a yellow slip in hand.

"Wheeler," he reads, signalling me to the front.

I gather my things and the class eyes me boredly.

"Your counselor is requesting to see you." The teacher signs the slip and gestures to the door where Nathan leans against the frame, his hands in his pockets. "This young gentleman is here to show you where the guidance offices are."

He passes the slip to me, and I turn wordlessly to follow Nathan down the hall.

I squint at the paper, the school crest on the corner, _Miss Wheeler_ scrawled elegantly over the line.

"It's fake," says Nathan.

"Huh?"

"It's fake. I jacked a whole pad of those slips last year."

"But this isn't your handwriting," I say stupidly.

Nathan smirks. "I can fake lots of stuff, not just IDs. But I am surprised this one really worked; I realized a little late I don't actually know your God-given first name." He tugs the fraudulent slip from my fingers, stuffs it in his pocket. "I wanna show you somethin'."

He dips underneath the school's main stairwell and sits cross-legged on the floor. He pats the spot next to him when I don't do the same.

"What happens if they catch us?" I ask, glancing over my shoulder, folding my skirt under me as I set down on my knees.

"Detention, probably. But here that's more like an after school group therapy kinda thing."

_"God."_ I'd rather sit in the silence of a ticking clock and a watchful teacher in need of a raise for an hour.

From his backpack, Nathan takes out a short stack of papers, shuffles through news articles he has printed out. "You said you recognize the name Bob Newby, right? Well so did I. And it was bothering me, so I went to the library—"

"He has a company here, in Chicago—Robert Newby, LLC. Maybe that's how you know it. My brother works for him."

"Yeah, yeah, I know what you're talking about. They've got that sign on one of the big buildings in the Loop, but that's only been there for, like, two or three years. I remembered that, too, but only after I found out the Bob Newby from Hawkins, Indiana, the one that woman in the newsclip was talking about," he slides a page of paper across to me, pointing to an obituary for one Robert Newby, "was the proud manager of a RadioShack, 'til he died in '84 from causes they didn't specify."

"So they're two different Bob Newbys, is what you're saying? Maybe it's a relative that owns the company here," I say, even as I skim the obituary a second time and find, once again, that no survivors are listed.

"I'm saying it's weird that your sister is tied in with this Bob Newby," he shakes the papers in his hands, "and now your brother is tied in with the Chicago Bob Newby. Whatever they're the same or not, it's a crazy conicedence."

I nod, but lately the world has proven itself far too small, far too tangled and confusing, to sum anything up as merely a coincidence.

III.

_"_ _Damn,"_ says Nathan, taking in the brownstone's entryway, the early afternoon light filtering in. "I might have to get a job at Newby. What does your bother even do there?"

"Research."

"In what?"

I shrug. "Physics."

Nathan frowns like my answer is too vague, but even I don't know much more than that.

In the living room, we push the coffee table aside and sit on our knees, spread the news articles out across the carpet.

"Maybe there's more in here that'll link our two Bobbys," Nathan says, and he sounds hopeful. "An article about a fund, or a family business, or a startup in his name, maybe. Question is, why would that go toward physics research if he was a tech guy?"

"Question _is,"_ I relocate the obituary, trace a finger over the name, "if they're both the same Robert Newby, if there really is a family fund or a startup or something, why would it be _here?_ Why not closer to Hawkins? Or in Maine, if that's where he grew up?"

Nathan's eyes narrow at all the papers. He toys with the twine bracelet around his wrist.

"Maybe it is just a conicedece," I say, echoing his idea from earlier, but it sounds much more hopeless from me. It makes me wonder why it even matters so much who my brother works for, or who this man who's death was mentioned alongisde Barbara Holland's is, or if they're in any way the same. Besides, this world has been feeling very small to me lately. Would it really make a difference it it got all that much smaller? If everything turned out to be simple happenstance?

The part of me that is still that nine-year-old girl with wide eyes and scabbed knees listening to the laughter float up from my mother's basement reminds me that I so desperately want to be in on my big brother's plans.

Nathan opens his mouth, snaps it back shut, right as mail is spit out from the front door's slot and onto the welcome mat.

I pull myself to my feet, step over all the papers. "Want anything to drink?" I offer, slipping into the front hall and collecting the envelopes. I move to the kitchen, drop them on the counter. "We have water, Sprite, Elmo endorsed apple juice…"

"Water'd be great. Thanks," Nathan says, wandering into the kitchen after me. He leans against the counter, and I turn to grab cups from the cabinet. He matters to himself in a dreadful way, "Oh, shit."

I turn. His head is bent over the new mail, over the address on the front of one of them.

"You didn't look at this?" His eyes widen at me.

"No." Why would I? It's not like anyone's sending anything to me. "What is it?"

Nathan holds up an envelope. "Either we've got two different Newby's, or a dead man has his bills delivered to your brother's house."

My stomach lurches, face twists into something terrible. I don't even try and hide my confusion.

I set down the cups, grab the envelope. Sure enough, printed right above my brother's address is the name Robert Newby, the return address the electric company.

Nathan sifts through the pile, presents me with a second. "Mortgage," he says.

"What the fuck?" I try my hardest to make sense of it, but wind up even more confused. "Does this mean the house is in Newby's name, then?"

The corner of Nathan's mouth quirks apologetically, but behind his eyes, his brain reels just as fast as mine. "I dunno, I've never bought a house but… it kinda looks like it."

"Do companies do that? Buy houses for their employees."

"Sometimes, yeah, I'm sure." Nathan shrugs, eyes the kitchen. "I dunno if they're ever as nice as this, though."

I try and shake the mail from my mind, remind myself that it's not my business. That it doesn't matter. But that nine-year-old inside me, stubborn as ever, insists that it is, and it does.

IV.

We bury the bills for Newby in the stack of mail, pick the papers off the floor, and set the coffee table back in perfect time for Jane and Charlie to get home. They hear us in the living room, and Charlie comes speed-waddling around the corner, her little face beaming.

"Auntie! Auntie guess, what?"

"What?" I ask, but her face falls and she stops short when she sees Nathan.

She reaches out, makes tiny fists in the hem of my skirt. I scoop her up and she buries her shy face in my shoulder.

Nathan arches a brow at me as if he didn't realize a kid was involved in all this mess, and I guess I never mentioned it, but with all the brightly colored plastic laying around, it's a pretty easy assumption.

Jane slips in after her, glances from me to Nathan and smiles kindly. "Hello."

"Jane, this is Nathan. He's a friend from school."

Nathan holds out his hand like the proper private academy boy he is, and they shake. Charlie peeks an eye out to watch. "Nice to meet you. You have a lovely home," he says, and he sells it as well as Summer.

"Thank you," Jane says. "Make yourself comfortable."

"That's very kind, but I should get going."

"Are you sure?"

"Yeah, yeah, my brother's expecting me."

Jane nods, understanding. Nathan collects his backpack and Charlie and I walk him to the front door.

"Bye," says Charlie, her small voice muffled by my shirt.

"Later, little lady," says Nathan, which makes her giggle. Then, to me, "She looks like you."

"Don't kid yourself."

He holds both hands up in surrender, dropping it. "See ya tomorrow, Baby Spice."

"Yeah, see ya," I say as he takes off down the steps, down the street, and I am left alone with my niece and my sister-in-law in someone's house, God knows if it's my brother's.

V.

Once upon a time, I tell Charlie when she insists I give her a bedtime story, there lived a King and a Queen. They seemed to love each other dearly.

The King offered his Queen dresses and pearl earrings and dinner parties. He built her a castle, kept her in the kitchen, but as long as he kept the cabinets filled with fine China, she never seemed to mind.

Soon came along a Princesses and a Prince, and for a while, they were the finest family in all the land. Willow-limbed and white-smiled. Strong-jawed and square-shouldered.

But the King wasn't half the ruler he claimed to be, and the Queen grew tired of his deceit, as she had the silverware and everything else on the property, and the castle began to show cracks.

This, unknowingly, invited the dragon in. Its fiery breath sent the castle up in smoke. The King fled the disaster to start a new life as a simple pauper, and the Princess escaped to another kingdom far, far away, and the Queen banished the dragon, took the opportunity to rebuild her home from the ruin exactly the way she liked it.

And as for the Prince, well, he took a note from his parents' mistakes. He claimed his place on the throne his father left behind, only he erected his own castle out of stone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy chapter eleven! I quickly wanted to mention in case you noticed that I did, in fact, switch my username from starsandrockets to starsandwristrockets, if only so it matches my Tumblr URL now (wow what a self-plug, feel free to find me over there). xx


	12. Dumbass

I.

One year at Thanksgiving, my cousins and I struck up a game of hide and seek. For once, Michael decided to join us and even suggested the hearth be our base, but I was the one who lost the first round of _Not It._

I buried my face in the couch cushions and counted to a hundred, footsteps scuffled off behind me. "Ready or not, here I come!"

I was doubtful anyone stayed in the living room, and we'd all agreed the second floor and the basement were both off-limits, so I wandered the first story. I checked the bathroom, behind the shower curtain, in the cabinet under the sink. Nothing.

I peeked behind drapes, looked under tables, and as I passed through the front hall I swore I heard something shift in the coat closet.

I pulled open the door and sure enough, Michael was crouched on the floor under the winter jackets, among the out of season shoes. He sprung to his feet, darted toward the safety of the fireplace, but I managed to keep up.

"You're _it_ next!" I giggled and tagged him.

He held his hands up in surrender. "You caught me."

II.

The papers on the back wall flutter when I open the door to the closet. In them, I hope to find my brother.

"Damn," is all Nathan says. He loosens his Thaddeus-issued tie, rests his hands on his hips.

Even after I tape up the printout of Bob Newby's obituary, add everything we learned yesterday to the _What I Know Now_ page, stick around more Post-it questions, Nathan still stands silently, lips pressed into a straight line, studying it all.

"I know how insane this must look."

He hums. "Mostly, it's just impressive how much this matters to you."

I cross my arms, turn back to my closet, try to see it the way he must. "It matters to you, too," I defend. "Otherwise you wouldn't be helping me."

"I must _really_ like puzzles, huh?" he muses. "Who's Will?"

"Family friend, turned sister's brother-in-law."

He nods. "What's he sick with?"

I frown. I don't know. How do I not know? I guess it never came up, and I was always taught it was rude to ask, so I kept my mouth shut. Besides, he was always just _Will,_ at one time as much of a constant in our house as the wallpaper, his sickness as much a part of him as the sound of his voice. I never thought much of it until the recent installment of his oxygen tank. "Something to do with his lungs, maybe."

I add Nathan's question to the wall on a blue sticky note.

"You really think it's related?"

At this point, I think everything affects everything. "Could be."

"Wanna know what I think?"

I wouldn't have shown him the damn closet if I didn't. "Humor me."

"I think it might help if you try and eliminate some stuff. Y'know how in math there's those parts of word problems that don't mean shit, they're just there to confuse you."

"It adds context."

"Context you don't need to solve the equation. Like… who's Summer?"

"My best friend."

He tilts an eyebrow. "You think she, or I guess her dad, _really_ had an impact on what happened to Barbara Holland?"

My shoulders form a stiff shrug. "All I know is that I have a bunch of snapshots here, all these small details, but I can't see the full picture and the harder I try the fuzzier it gets."

"You think there might be a reason your brother doesn't _want_ you to see the full picture?"

"Yes." I look him dead in the eye now, try and bore my inexplicable desperation into him. "And I have no idea what that reason could be, other than that I was born too late. And _that_ is why it matters so much to me."

"Okay." He nods like he might get it now. Or is at least pretending to until he actually does. "Okay."

"Okay," I echo. "Where do you think we should start?"

He considers this, points to one of my pages. "If the third floor is for working, then there's gotta be something about Bob Newby up there. The man or the company or both."

III.

The door to my brother's office is locked, but it's nothing I can't pick. It swings open easily for me, the hall light spilling into the darkness.

Michael has left the curtains drawn, and the sun filters in around the edges, casting odd shadows over the space. Filing boxes are haphazardly stacked, and the clutter over the large mahogany desk is its own organized chaos. Against the back wall is a chalkboard, the kind on wheels, erased of all potentially useful information. Bookshelves line another wall, all fancy spines and academic texts, I'm sure, but if there is an order to them, I can't tell what it is. In a way, the way Michael keeps his space is not unlike how he used to keep our mother's basement.

I take my first step into the room, the hardwood creaking under my weight.

Nathan follows me in, and I flick on the light craned over the desk. "What should we look for first?"

"Anything with Newby's name on it, I guess," says Nathan, already taking interest in the books on a shelf.

I take a seat in the leather swivel chair, peek inside a file on top of a stack to the side, but in it is a bunch of expense spreadsheets and other shit I don't understand.

"You said he's in _physics,_ right?"

I move onto the next file, flip through some papers. "Yeah. Why?"

"His books—they're about molecular biology." He gestures. "And this whole shelf is _electrochemistry."_

"So?"

 _"_ _So,_ Miss It-All-Adds-Context, you don't think that's weird? Why would he need these?"

"No, I think _he's_ weird. He's always been into all kinds of science shit. Honestly, he probably reads those for fun."

" _Fun?"_

"I'm telling you, he's _weird."_

I move onto another file and finally, I find it—Bob Newby's name. More specifically, a correspondence on the Robert Newby, LLC letterhead. Vague yet to the point, it offers the recipient an opportunity to reach out with any questions or concerns regarding some type of experimental result. Signed, but evidently yet to be sent, Michael Wheeler, President.

There is a pit in my stomach that lurches and sinks. My brother knew Bob Newby, but not in any way I would've thought to guess. My brother didn't work for him, he named his company after him.

 _His_ company.

Nathan's hunch was right: Robert Newby, LLC is a startup not by him, but in his name. Only, it isn't a family business. Never was. It's been my brother all along, linking both.

 _President._ Whatever it is the company does, he's in charge. Jane, Karen, Nancy all must know. Hell, Will Byers knows.

Everyone must know but me.

How could I be so _stupid?_ How have I not realized it? The house, the employees, the urgency. The _brains_ , Michael even said for himself.

I shove the file back in the stack of them. Bury my face in my hands.

I am convinced coincidences do not exist. This knot is far more tangled than I thought, and I am nothing more than the dumbass who refuses to understand that the more I try and undo it, the worse it will get.

IV.

I jack a pad of sticky notes from the top drawer of Michael's desk. I need to get this whole new influx of questions out of me and onto the page before they can escape. With one of his pens, I scribble down the broadest ones first before narrowing down to the details, but come to find many are still the same as the ones already up on the closet's wall.

Nathan continues poking around the room, eventually joining me at the desk and thumbing through the drawers. He crouches by the bottom one.

"Uh... Baby?"

I sit back, follow his gaze under the desk to where a small black safe sits, like a dare.

We share a look.

"There's gotta be somethin' in there, right?" he says for the both of us. "Somethin' useful."

Maybe there is, maybe there isn't, but it's worth a damn shot.

Charlie's birthday is the first thing I try on the safe's keypad. Nothing. I try Michael's next. Nothing. Jane's. The lock clicks.

I scoff. "Dumbass."

Something inside me hesitates a moment before pulling open the door.

My gaze zeros in on the gun. _"Christ,_ Michael."

It isn't that haven't seen guns in person before. They sat in Jim Hopper's holster when he stopped by my mother's house with Jane, or on Phil Callahan's kitchen table as he got to cleaning his small collection, but those were all expected places and people I trusted to properly handle them. I never pegged Michael as someone to learn how.

Other than the pistol, there is only a box of bullets and a large manilla envelope. Nathan reaches for the latter but hesitates, gives me a look as if asking for my permission.

Only, it isn't mine to give. All I can do is shrug, and it's good enough for him.

"My God," he says when he opens the damn thing.

"What is it?"

He reaches in, pulls out three passports, then hands me the rest of it.

Inside is money. A few banded stacks of it, the sum probably the most I've ever held before.

Nathan is standing again, holding a passport under the desk lamp when he says in awe, "These are so well done."

My brow furrows. "What do you mean?"

He opens another. "I mean they're fake, but they look so _real…_ When I'd make driver's licenses, there were always a few small details that could never be perfect," he blows impressed air from his cheeks, "but these seem like they pretty much are."

"They're _fake?"_ I find myself standing, too. "How can you tell?"

He tilts one so I can see. It has Charlie's face, the hologram overlay, but all the wrong words. "This isn't the Miller family, is it Detective Spice?"

I tug it from his fingers. He passes over the other two and eases the envelope from my hand. He's right. The passports look, even feel, so real. I would've believed them if I didn't know any better.

Though they probably could've picked better names for themselves, and I snort to myself for narrowing in on that, out of all things, but I get where they're going with it. Names like Micah and Charolette allow them room to slip, to call each other Mike and Charlie and get away with it. Jane's fake name, however, is beyond me: Eleanor Miller.

Eleanor. _Eleanor._

And then, for once, something clicks. Two pieces of the puzzle fit.

 _TO MIKE AND EL,_ Nancy wrote.

To Mike and _Eleanor._

But why would Nancy be calling her that?

Nathan pulls the one last thing from the manilla envelope, holds that out for me, too—a Social Security Card. Maybe it's real, maybe it's fake, but under the numbers is the name we came searching for: Robert Newby.

"The hell do you think they wanna run from?" Nathan asks.

My mind is reeling, trying to organize this mess of new information on Nancy and Jane and Michael. On Bob Newby, the man or the company or the owner of this house, all the same.

And then I start to think maybe a place as nice as this in a name that isn't Wheeler is not for running. "What if they're not?" I say. "What if they're hiding in plain sight?"

V.

Summer calls. Says Ryan passed on Michael's number.

She asks about a billion questions about private school, about a billion more about Nathan when she discovers I already made a friend, and mostly I don't have answers. She asks none about Michael or Jane or Charlie, none about what they've been up to these past few years, though I don't exactly have those answers, either. Then, she goes on and on about her hardass dad and her less-than-angelic new life at Northern.

It is undeniably relieving to hear her voice, to know after everything she is alright, but my mind is elsewhere. All these petty high school issues, all the parties and the fights and the melodrama that seemed so damn important not very long ago feel so pointless, so far off from where my mind is now.

How has it only been a week?

The longer she talks, the more envious I become of it. I'd rather be so invested in when the next party is, or where we can score some cheap booze sip with Matilda at the junkyard this weekend, or who happened to find their way into the backseat of Jesse Wolfer's pre-owned Ford Verona this time.

I think I'd give anything, almost, for life to seem that simple again. For the opportunity to take it all back.

Can it ever be the same? Maybe I should ask Nathan.


	13. Madman

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So sorry I didn't upload last week! Life got overwhelming for a little while but I'm so happy to be back to this now. I hope you all enjoy. xx

I.

The next morning, Michael is in a rush. I stand, my back against the counter, and shovel down my Lucky Charms as I watch him tear through the house like a tornado.

Jane already left with Charlie, and Michael is tying his shoes like a madman.

"Where's the fire?" I mumble through a full mouth.

He doesn't look at me, just around the space. "Have you seen my keys?"

The deflection doesn't get past me. I grab his keys from the island, underhand them his way. "Fix your tie."

"What?" he is somehow struggling to fasten his watch around his wrist.

"Your _tie."_ He's about to leave with it completely undone. I set down my cereal bowl, stride over to do it myself, all thanks to Thaddeus, and press again. "Big day for physics?"

"Big day for _me_ ," he sighs. Then, "I have this big meeting, and I should've left ten minutes ago."

"I wouldn't worry about it," I say, and I can't help it, as I synch the knot of his tie up to his throat. "It's not like they can fire you."

He gives me that squinny eyed look of his, the one that tries to dissect all the layers of nuance and connotation, but he is running behind and I am already walking away.

II.

In algebra, while Mr Fields' back is turned, I slip Nathan a note on a torn corner of graph paper: _Stairwell. Lunch._

He nods discreetly, and when lunchtime comes, he's there even before I am. I plant myself down on the floor, loosen my tie. He follows lead.

"We need to figure out what my brother does at Newby," I decided after having the time to process all of yesterday's findings and this morning's interaction. "I think it could be the big piece we're missing from this whole thing."

Sure, he's the company's president. Sure, they do research. But the money, the gun, the passports. There's something more. Some reason he has them. There's got to be.

Nathan nods, turns the thought carefully in his mind over and over. Asks, "What's he told you so far?"

"Practically nothing." My eyes roll. "He dodges all my questions."

Nathan sighs. "Okay. Okay, let's work this way then—you said he's _always_ been into science?"

I nod. In my memory, he was always doing extra credit homework, testing strange theories, prepping for the science fair.

"Where'd he go to college?"

"MIT."

"Jeez… Did he intern anywhere?"

I shrug. "How should I know."

"I dunno." He holds his hands up. "You _are_ his sister."

"But he's, like, nine years older than me, remember? We were never close."

"Right," he says, and he looks a little pitiful for it, like I've just reminded him not everyone's brother is their best friend and the truth is a bit bitter. "What about your sister?"

"What _about_ my sister?"

"Were you ever close?"

I chuckle, but there is no humor to it. There was a time, Karen swears, that Nancy was obsessed with me. She must've been thirteen, before she had much cooler, better, older things to do. Allegedly, she lived to pinch my fat baby cheeks and dress me up in pink baby clothes and warm up my tiny baby bottles. And allegedly, she was one of the only people who could calm me down when I got fussy. But by the time I was actually old enough to have interests and memories, she was old enough to stop caring. So, "No," I tell Nathan, because I was too young for it to count. "She's even older."

"Was Michael close with her? When you all lived together."

That, I had never considered. If they were, they aren't anymore. Nancy may still talk to Jane from time to time, but she burned her bridges carefully, made sure the ash still looked like it could hold somebody's weight.

I open my mouth to complain that we're getting off topic when the authoritative clack of heels against linoleum starts from somewhere down the hall. It grows closer.

"Shit," we both mumble. I jump to my feet, but Nathan scrambles to find his.

"C'mon," I tell him, and watch as he gets his footing, moves to swing his backpack over his shoulder, and the zipper as it gapes open in time with my jaw, his books, papers, various stolen passes all clatter against the floor, echoing in the height of the stairwell.

He swears again, pauses for a moment to give me a look of pure dread before he begins picking up the mess. The clacking picks up it's pace. "You should go, before you get in trouble, too. Seriously," he tells me. Then, when I don't, " _Go."_

He looks certain, so I take off flying up the steps, my muscles falling into rhythm.

I can hear the disjointed bass of an administrator's voice below me, but I am already gone, my feet hitting the second floor, my shoulder shoving against the bathroom door.

Two girls glossing their lips by the sinks eye me through the mirror. I right my tie, my fingers shaking for a cigarette, but I don't bother asking tweedle dee or tweedle dum if they've got one to spare. I just wait for the bell to ring so I can head safely to my next class.

As the afternoon passes, I don't see Nathan anywhere. Don't hear anything about him at all until I'm sitting at my desk in second-to-last period waiting for Spanish to begin when Nathan's friend, Tony, the joyrider, slips into his usual seat next to mine, but not before laying a corner of paper ceremoniously before me with a rehearsed, _"Para ti, señorita."_

It's been torn from a flyer, one of the yellow ones wallpapered over the school advertising the upcoming spring semiformal, I can tell. On the back, there's a note. No name, but there doesn't need to be. Just a phone number and a couple short sentences scrawled hastily in Nathan's regular handwriting.

_Got detention after school. Call if anything comes up._

III.

I take the bus home alone and open the door alone and disable the security alarm alone. I head up to the third floor alone and pick the office's lock alone and sift through Michael's things, all alone, in search of any hint as to what he does day to day.

I start in the simplest place—looking, once again, through the files stacked on the side of my brother's desk, but my hunt takes a turn when I cross one full of forms, each filled out for a different person in a woman's neat script—Kali's, I can only assume. Each sorted alphabetically and complete most notably with a name, a paper clipped photograph, and a date of death.

Weird as they are, they mean almost nothing to me. Until one does. I don't recognize any of these people, and then I do.

Kind of.

There is a woman toward the middle. She has Ryan's nose, his coloring, his last name.

Constance "Connie" Frazier, it summarizes to me, worked as an agent for Hawkins Lab 'til she died in '83—eerily close to the date of Barbara Holland's death—and I remember now the old building on the outskirt of town, the supposedly haunted one kids dared each other to jump the fence of and break into in the middle of the night up until the perimeter tightened this past year. The one left abandoned because of the chemical leak that killed Barbara.

Did it kill her too? Or was Connie caught up in the same government that tried to cover it all?

Not much else is listed other than her only known next of kin: _Richard Frazier of Hawkins, IN - Brother_

Connie's brother, Ryan's father.

My fingers are at the phone on Michael's desk, dialling Ryan's number before I can even think.

The dial tone rings in my ear and it hits me—what the hell am I supposed to say? I can't flat out ask him about his dead aunt, not out of the blue. Besides, he would've been _four_ in '83. Did he even remember her from then? Did he even understand death that young?

I'm about to hang up when Sophie answers. "Hello?"

"Hey," I say, "it's me."

"Oh, my God, girl. Hey!" Her voice chippers. "How's Chicago? Have you gone to the Skydeck yet? The one at Sears Tower. Rebecca went with her family last summer and she says it's, like, the _trippiest_ thing—"

In the back, I hear Ryan ask about me, and my whole body sighs.

All it takes is hearing his voice to realize this is exactly why I called. I needed to make sure his life was carrying on so mundanely like this, with Sophie and his brother and the rest of his sisters, the family he loves, the family that counts, as it should. To remind myself he can't actually be all caught up in this same mess.

Ryan pulls the phone away from his sister. "Hey."

"Hi."

"Hey," he says again, then we are silent for a while. My finger traces letters on the form in front of me, _F-R-A-Z-I-E-R_. "You alright?"

My head shakes. "I dunno," I find myself telling him honestly for the first time. "I dunno. Are you?"

He offers a tired chuckle. "I don't really know, either."

IV.

The walk to Grant Park is only about a mile. After I got off the phone with Ryan, I took up Nathan's offer and called him, too. He said it'd be a good place for us to meet and talk, since our brothers would be home any minute.

Buckingham Fountain greets me there, and I search through the crowd of tourists for Nathan.

It feels strange for us to be in our normal clothes, to have our hair down together for the first time since we met that day on the bus. It feels like it's been a lifetime since then.

Maybe it has.

He leads me through the park, finds a quiet bench with a view for us to sit and observe the people, the city, our backs toward Lake Michigan.

"How was detention?"

He smirks, twists a dread between his fingers. "Be glad you got outta there so damn fast, Sporty Spice."

I grin like I've won a race I never signed up for.

A moment slips by. A mother pushes a stroller past before Nathan cuts to the chase. "So you found something?"

"Yeah. There was this file up in Michael's office. It was all these forms about dead people. Like a way to keep track of them all, almost," I try and explain to the best of my ability.

"Dead people?"

I nod. "Their names, their photos, their next of kin…"

"Do any of them look connected?"

I shrug. I should've known to pay closer attention, but I didn't know what to think of it.

"Was there anyone you knew? Or knew _of?_ Like Newby?"

I hesitate, if only because I know how bad it sounds. "My boyfriend's aunt," I say. Then, lower, "She died, like, four days after Barbara Holland went missing."

His face twists a few different ways before settling on something like utter confusion. "Did it say _how?"_

"No." But that information has to be out there somewhere, right? Some other file or article or—

"So Michael has a shit-load of cash, a house in a dead man's name, those passports, that gun," he starts in a tense hush, _"and_ a file of _other_ dead people including your _boyfriend's aunt."_

"It wasn't his handwriting, if it helps," I say, though I'm not sure why I'm defending him.

Nathan creases his brows at me. "You think it's someone else's file? And Michael just… has it."

"I _know_ it's someone else's file."

"A bounty hunter's," Nathan deadpans.

"No." There is a lot I do not know about my brother, but I am certain of this. "Michael would never hurt anyone. Not like that. Besides, he was—what?— _twelve_ in '83…"

It's Kali I'm not so sure of. I push that thought from my head, too.

"Okay," he says. "Okay." His face is so sincere, so sympathetic, I look away. "But the question's still the same," he prompts gently. "We need to figure out who the hell you're living with."

I look to the sun as it begins to set, to the groups of people splayed around the park, laughing together and snapping photos for their vacation albums and living room mantles in blissful ignorance.

For a while, Nathan lets me do nothing more than watch. Then, rather than ask, he says simply, "Danny's playing a show next weekend. You should come."

"I don't know your brother."

"So you'll meet him. And you'll take your mind off all this shit, and you'll have _fun._ Ever learn how to do that?"

I shoot him a look.

"It'll be good," he says. "I promise. _And_ it's a great excuse to skip the God awful semiformal or whatever-the-fuck is happenin' that night."

I crack a smile at that, pull a foot up to the bench and rest my chin on my knee. "Only if we can stay here a while." I don't want to go back. Not yet. Maybe not ever.

His whole face grins back at me, and the two of us sit and lose all sense of time there in Grant Park, sharing silence over cigarettes as we watch the sun sink down behind the city and the world carry on without us.

V.

I am home before it's even fully dark. From where I stand in the threshold I can hear the hushed, tense tones of Michael and Jane in the next room, arguing without trying to disturb Charlie.

I try and fail to make out what they're saying. I wonder if it's about me. I wonder if Jane is winning. She always used to. Always.

I shut the front door behind me, not quietly. Their voices cut silent. I break for the stairs.

"Holly," Jane calls after me, but it is Michael who follows me up, his footsteps falling heavy behind mine.

"What the hell?" he asks. "You can't just disappear like that. You didn't call, didn't leave a note—"

As much as Michael now wants to play the role of my father, he's got his lines all wrong. He doesn't bother asking where I've been, who was with me, why I reek of smoke, because he doesn't care. All that matters is that I wasn't here, we weren't doing what our mother asked of us. Aren't we a little old for that now?

"Don't worry about me," I tell him without so much as a glance his way. "I take care of myself, remember?"

I turn the corner into my room. He backs off, even as some part deep within me screams for him not to.


	14. Nightmare

I.

When Nathan and I make it back to the brownstone after school, Jane's car is already parked out front.

"She's home already?" asks Nathan.

"Must be…"

In the living room, Jane stands by the end table, murmuring into the phone, while Charlie lays curled up in a ball on the sectional, her stuffed lion tucked under her arm, her nose red and runny as she watches cartoons.

"Hey, what's going on?" I ask, setting down beside her, sweeping hair from her face.

She doesn't answer, just curls further into herself, nestles her little head against my leg. Her eyelids are droopy, breath shallow.

Jane hangs up the phone with a sigh. "She's sick. Just a cold, I think, but daycare called and asked if I could bring her home early." She glances to Nathan, then back to me apologetically. "Listen, I hate to ask you to do this, but I left work in a rush and there's something I need to finish up quickly, and Mike still needs something to be dropped off, and she's not doing much—"

I shrug. "I'll watch her."

It wouldn't be the worst thing. Jane said it herself, Charlie wasn't up to much, just dozing off in front of the TV. Compared to all the times I helped Ryan look after his heard of siblings, this would be a breeze. Besides, all me and Nathan planned on doing was looking for connections between the dead people in that file.

Her face washes over with relief. "Really? I'm not asking too much?"

"No, not at all." I shake my head, and Nathan does too.

"She can go down early. She usually has no issue sleeping when she's sick, and I'll try not to be too long."

"It's fine. Take your time," I assure.

She leans over the couch to hug me. "You're a lifesaver, Baby Holly. I don't know how I lived without you here." She scoops up Charlie's tired body, says something about getting her into pajamas, and takes off up the steps.

Nathan's shit-eating grin practically splits his face in half.

"What?"

"You're name's _Holly?"_

I shoot him my most admonishing look.

"I'm not making' fun, I swear. It just doesn't really fit you, does it?"

"No," I agree. Even here, I feel split, Baby and Holly each at odds with one another inside me, only ever crossing paths in the mouths of a select few who know half as much. "It doesn't."

II.

Is it the escalation of this mystery that entices us? Or do we really have nothing better to do? Either way, Nathan and I find ourselves back up in Michael's office after Jane gets going and Charlie gets to bed.

Only this time, something's different.

This time, there's writing on the chalkboard demanding our attention, the handwriting the same as in the death file. Kali's, I'm still sure. She must've stopped by while I was out yesterday. She's written out a list:

_DOUBLE-BLIND_

_E. Adams (DOE007), carrier. Test EEG, test NMPT._

_P. Benicia (DOE012), carrier. Test EEG. Tested: NMPT, positive._

_W. Hansen (DOE003), artificial induction, delayed. Tested: EEG, positive. NMPT, negative._

_D. Reis (DOE102), suspected carrier. Pending. Test EEG, test NMPT, test ECR._

_G. Wilson (DOE004), artificial induction, early. Tested: EEG, positive. NMPT, unresponsive._

_H. Wilson, carrier. Tested: EEG, positive. Test NMPT, test ECR._

"People. They're experimenting on _people,"_ I realize, and the dread sinks in. What was that I said yesterday? That thing about being so sure Michael would never hurt anyone.

But Nathan looks far more dazed by it than me.

"What is it?" I ask.

His voice is barely above a whisper. "Danny."

It takes a double-take for me to see it, for it to click for me, too. _D. Reis_ , it says, plain as day. If not Danny, then who else could it be? Sure the city is large, but the walls of my world close in smaller and smaller.

"They're fuckin' with us now. Right?" Nathan looks to me, almost hopeful. "They're fuckin' with us."

My jaw just hangs open and useless.

Nathan huffs, turns back to the board, reads it again and again. "'Cause there's no way that's real. No way. I mean, what does this shit even mean? _Suspected Carrier. Pending._ Carrier of _what?_ "

My head is beginning to hurt and I wish I knew. My eyes catch on one of the file cabinets against the wall. "Maybe there's a way to find out."

"I wanna know why his number's different," he decides.

"His what?"

Nathan gestures to the board. "His number. They're all D-O-E- _zero_ -whatever, yeah? Danny's goes D-O-E- _one_ -zero-two"

The numbers seem eerily familiar now that he points them out. I look them all over once, then twice, trying to place it, but it is _P. Benicia (DOE012)_ that brings forth Jane's hidden tattoo in my memory— _011._

Is _J. Wheeler_ supposed to be on this board, too?

My stomach churns. I pull the straightened bobby pins from where I have them tucked down the side of my shoe and start toward the filing cabinet.

III.

We spend the next hour picking our way into drawers, shuffling through files and placing everything back carefully in place, but none of it means anything to me. I'm no scientist or CEO. Hell, I'm barely scraping my way through eleventh grade. And anyway the name Daniel Reis refuses to make an appearance.

Then Nathan stumbles across something I half-recognize. Something I'd nearly forgotten about.

"He has a whole folder," he says, amusedly thumbing through the pages, "of _crayon_ art."

"Seriously?" I peek over, and he holds it out for me.

 _"_ _This_ is the kind of scientific excellence I always knew would carry us into the next millennia."

Sure enough, they're drawings made of crayon and loose-leaf paper, but I'd know them anywhere. They're Will Byers'. I used to love them when I was little, loved watching him make them whenever I got the chance. It was the coolest thing to see his creatures come to life across the page, to hear the stories he would tell me about them.

Though none of the pictures in the folder are ones I particularly remember from childhood, shuffling through them calls up all the old memories.

There is one of a gigantic spider, towering like a shadow over the tops of trees before a swirl of red sky.

There are a few after of nothing but blue and black and purple scribbles, some corners of the pages torn, others still stuck with tape like they'd all hung together somewhere once, a large "X" marking the center of one.

And then there is one of a monster, purplish-grey, with a red face splayed open like a flower, like a deep and bottomless pit, and fingers of branch-like claws, spread out and reaching.

My heart lurches against my ribcage.

IV.

It was never that the wood-panelled hall was really big, it was that I was really little, and the lights were so pretty, and surely my mother would be there when I got back, and I wouldn't wander too far, anyway, so I followed them, my head tilted toward the ceiling, a warmth flooding my chest as they lit up one by one to show me the way to the bedroom at the end, the one with the lamps balanced on every surface.

They lit up all around me, slowly at first. One by one, then two by two, until each restlessly flickered. Until the light chased itself in a circle and I followed along like a dog chasing its tail, and I couldn't keep up. I couldn't keep up, but the light was everywhere at once, and it must have been, had to have been, what magic felt like.

Then, all at once, the light was gone.

I spun slowly around, hoping to find it again, but all that came was a deep grumbling from within the wall. I headed toward that too, expecting something equally astonishing, and found it.

A hand stretched again the wall, plaster giving way like putty to something inhuman, something with fingers of branch-like claws.

I should've been scared, but I wasn't. I should've been scared, but my curiosity got the best of me. I wanted to reach out, too.

It almost broke through and got me, but it didn't. It almost was a memory, but it wasn't.

It existed in my mind before now merely as a dream, a reoccurring nightmare, a siren in my subconscious. Never a memory in full.

Not until now.

V.

"You okay?"

I can only shake my head because the blood has drained from my face, the voice drained from my throat. I barely make out, "It's impossible."

"What is?"

The floor lamp flickers, and I hope to God it's just my mind playing tricks on me.

"We should go," I realize, shutting the picture into the file, putting everything back where it belongs, slamming drawers closed. "They might be back soon."

"But…" Nathan begins helplessly, pushing his dreads out of his face and glancing back at the chalkboard, at his brother's name, at what it all could possibly mean.

"We'll figure something out, Nathan, I swear, but I can't—we shouldn't be up here. Not now. C'mon."

Nathan pouts, pulls himself to his reluctant feet, and I scan the room to be sure everything is exactly as we found it.

I lock the door before closing it behind us, and the hall light flickers over our heads.

"Did you see that?" I hate the way my voice sounds.

"It's just the light… Are you okay? What'd you find?"

Another ceiling light flickers down the hall, over the staircase.

"Wake up," I whisper, following it nonetheless, like it wants me to, with my head tilted toward the ceiling. "Wake up, wake up, wake up."

 _"_ _Baby,"_ pleads Nathan, following after me.

I step under the light and it flickers again. "I have dreams like this."

Nathan's brow knits, and I head down to the second floor. The light flickers to greet us there, too.

"The hell?" He murmurs, sees it now.

A radio turns itself on in a room not too far, and that is when I notice the light pouring out from under Charlie's door.

I run to her and Nathan keeps at my heels.

I push into her room. "Charlie?"

She stands in her crib, bitty fingers tight around the bars, silent despite the tears pouring over her red cheeks.

Around us, the room is alight. Lamps and nightlights strobe wild, plastic toys blink every color of the rainbow, a CD player on the bookshelf flips fervently through tracks.

"What the—" starts Nathan.

"Fuck this," I agree. _"Fuck_ this."

Charlie gives one final tug on the bars of her crib before she reaches out to me, lights swelling, blood beginning to seep down from her nose. "Auntie…"

"Is _she_ doing this?" Nathan asks, incredulous.

I cross the room, scoop her up. The lights, the toys, the music all shut out.

I share a look with Nathan, neither of us knows what to make of it all. He tries the switch, but the lights stay off.

Charlie balanced on my hip, I make my way downstairs, through the kitchen and the living room testing switches, but nothing comes of it. I consider checking the generator before I realize I don't know where it is in this house or what a normal one is supposed to even look like, let alone one that could cause all of _that._

I can't help but consider what Nathan said. Is Charlie what caused all of this? If monsters are real, is it really so hard to believe? She is already nodding back to sleep in my arms, innocent as ever.

"It's impossible," I say again, stupidly, trying the light from the front hall. Nothing. "Fuck this."

I open the front door, dash down the steps two at a time. Charlie lifts her sleepy, stuffy head.

"Baby, where the hell are you going?" Nathan calls, following me still.

I stop on the sidewalk. Spin myself in a circle, try to gather my thoughts, piece together a sense of direction. Everything is so dark.

I spin to face him. "I quit."

_"What?"_

"I can't do this anymore. I don't _want_ to do this anymore. I quit. If there's shit I don't know it's gotta be for a reason. Right? Isn't that what you said?" I hate the way my voice shakes, my throat burns, when I'm about to cry. Trying not to only ever makes things worse.

"Just breathe," Nathan gives my shoulder a reassuring squeeze, but even he's trying hard to make sense of this senseless information. I can see it in his face. I look away. "Okay? Breathe. Looks like the whole street lost power. We'll figure it out, just come back inside."

"Don't cry," Charlie pats a hand over my wet cheek, helpful as she is. "It's okay."

The part of me that is still nine doesn't want to be told to breathe, doesn't want to be told it's okay. She wants to be included in her brother's plans, and she wants those plans to be the two of them trading milkshakes at Sonny's, and she wants to hear Will's stories as he draws creatures that were never supposed to be real, and she wants it all to be okay now.

And the part of me that is me now wants that, too. I want that, too.

I hold onto Charlie a little tighter.


	15. Lowlife

I.

There are secrets in this house, I know now, and they are dark. The kind that causes something in the air to shift, causes reality to distort. Every look, every smile, every half-finished sentence makes me wonder what is real and what is merely apart of playing house.

Maybe my mind is playing tricks on me, but maybe Michael is beginning to slip because of it. He'll smile, but his eyes don't gleam as warmly as they used to. He'll laugh, but the sound is hollowed out. He'll put a hand on my shoulder as he walks by, but more and more it feels like a warning. _Don't get too close. Don't move too far out of reach._

More than anything, Michael is smart, calculated. If he has a secret—and he does—he would stop at nothing to keep it hidden, because if I ever found out, it would change things.

Only, it already has.

Distrust cycles between us; I don't trust Michael, which makes him not trust me, which makes out eyes miss each other's when we talk, makes our words miss their intended connotations. It makes our small talk forced, our laughs tight.

And still, the most basic truth of the matter is Michael is my older brother. Since the day I was born, it has been his job to protect me, and in some twisted way he seems to be doing exactly that—though God knows from what; maybe monsters, maybe himself—and I have no choice but to love him for it.

Because I do love him. Unconditionally. But I do not _know_ him. Maybe I never have, but that divide is so much more evident now. His world—whatever world that is—is so much different than the one I have been living in. And I don't know how, because I missed it, but I know that Nancy is part of it all, too.

Back in Hawkins, when it was me and Karen and the abundance of space in that house on the end of Maple Street, I never felt like I was missing out on being their sister. I had never felt purposely excluded.

Now, things are different.

Now, I am sure. Michael and Nancy and Jane were all part of something I hadn't been—something big; I can sense it. They can say that it was nothing, that none of it mattered.

But we, the Wheelers, are all brilliant liars. It did.

II.

It was some unprecedented power surge, they said. The lights went wild, then the whole street blacked out. Strange enough to make the local news.

Whether it was some electrical issue, or it really was Charlie, or a monster, I'm not sure I want to know anymore.

Here's the thing about secrets: they are made to be stay buried for a reason.

Whatever Michael's reason is, I want nothing to do with it anymore.

It's too much. I want to take it all back.

I tear the pages from the wall of my closet, toss open my bathroom window, sit criss cross on the cold tile floor and take my Bic to each and every one of them over my empty waste bin.

Everything I spit out of me and onto the page is swallowed up by flame in my fingers. What I knew, what I know now, and all the questions. So many goddamn questions that never could connect. I watch them take shape now, never as I'd originally hoped, but rather forming ember, succumbing to ash, vanishing up in smoke.

III.

The door to Principal Murphy's office had been surprisingly easy to pick with just two straightened-out bobby pins. Then again, the outdatedness of the whole building probably had something to do with it. The pins of the lock gave way and the latch clicked open without much protest.

"You got it?" Summer whispered, voice hitched with excitement.

I turned the knob and the door swung open.

We slipped into the room, clicked the door back in place behind us. The office was a small, blandly-colored room kept meticulously clean. We knew it well. Off to the side, there was a door to a room that could only be accessed by Murphy herself. Or, apparently, any seventeen-year-old girl with a pair of hairpins, because with a little perseverance I was able to successfully pick my way through that one, too.

"You're fucking brilliant, Baby. Keep look out?"

I assumed position peering out into the hall through the slats in the office's window blinds. The school seemed eerily still. Everyone else was in the auditorium for the annual _D.A.R.E._ assembly, but Summer and I had other plans.

It didn't take her long to find what she needed. Only a few minutes passed before she came marching out of the file room, stuffing her bag full with manila envelopes. "Okay, let's dip."

We made a B-line for the bathroom, the one furthest away from the auditorium, locked the door behind us, and got to work without another word, me pulling the trash bag from the can, Summer climbing the sinks to disable the smoke alarm. We dumped the files from Summer's bag into the empty trash bin.

"Got a light?" Summer asked, knowing I always did.

I pulled my matchbook from the inside of my denim jacket, revelled in the strike and the spark. I watched it burn, mesmerized, halfway down before lighting the corner of a page for kindling. Once it got burning well, I tossed it in the trash with the rest of them.

It spread warmly, my small, slow burn, much more smoke and ember than open flame, but as much as I wanted to sit and admire our handiwork, we couldn't stick around.

"How fucking angelic is that?" Summer swung her backpack over her shoulder, turned on her heel toward the door.

"Should've brought marshmallows," I said, and she threw her head back with a laugh.

Such stupid, stupid girls we'd been.

IV.

I don't realize what I'm doing until I hear the phone ringing in my ear. One minute I am laying in bed contemplating the intricacies of my life, of the universe, and the next there is a click as someone picks up the other end of the line.

"Byers' residence," answers Nancy. She sounds tired, like I'm interrupting something important.

I try and swallow, but find it increasingly difficult. I try and find words, but that's even harder. My mind is devoid fo all the questions I have for her, instead turning over and over only one: How long has it been since I've heard her voice?

For the life of me, I can't remember. An eternity, I decide. It has to have been.

"Hello?" she says, increasingly impatient. "Is anyone there?"

The words, "Wrong number," tumble off my tongue, fast so she won't recognize they're from me. Then, I hang up. Let the cordless drop to the bed beside me.

I want to curl up in my covers, let sleep wash over me for a few hours or days or weeks so I don't have to think, don't have to hear the phone ringing off the hook damn near every hour since Friday night, don't have to hope against hope it isn't Nathan again, but every time I close my eyes I see the lights going mad, see monster, once Will's, now mine, stretching against the wall for me, so I pull myself to my feet, head downstairs to the kitchen.

It seems so happy down here in the simplest way. U2 plays over the radio and Jane hums along while she reads at the kitchen table. Mike carries on quizzing Charlie on animal nosies white he wipes chocolate ice cream off her teeny fingers.

They make it look so easy. My stomach churns.

Jane looks up with a smile for me, like an invitation to step into this serene space.

I stay where I am, standing not in the hall, but not in the kitchen, either, and I can't help but ask, "Does Will still draw?"

Michael turns, studies me.

Jane frowns, says, "I'm not sure." She looks to Michael as if he might.

"I remember he always did." I pick at a piece of chipped paint on the entry frame. "He used to draw a bunch of different creatures, ones that don't exist. Dragons and monsters and stuff. He'd tell me stories about them.

"You remember that?" asks Michael.

I nod. "He was really good."

Michael smiles, not at me, God knows, but rather _past_ me. Like I'm standing in front of a projector screen presenting a slideshow of old memories. "We used to play Dungeons and Dragons all the time," he tells me after a moment in his head. "He always liked drawing the different monsters from it. His own versions of that he thought they'd look like."

Monsters. Not ones hiding in walls, but ones from a game carefully crafted and passed down by nerds, evolved by Will's wild imagination. So what if Mike kept a few? Maybe it was sentimental value. Is it possible I saw the drawing from my dreams laying around a long, long time ago? Is it possible it was good enough, haunting enough, to spark a lifetime of vivd nightmares?

Maybe. Maybe. Either way, it helps if I tell myself it's the truth.

V.

I find myself up early enough Monday morning to go for a run before school, but the last thing I expect is to find Kali standing by the front steps waiting for me.

"Come," she says.

"Why?"

She shoots me a testing glare. It makes me follow.

She looks younger than the last time I saw her, dressed so casually in black jeans and a slouchy grey top. The heels of her ankle boots clack against the sidewalk, her step confident, demanding authority.

We walk in silence for a few blocks, turn a corner and walk a few more. She starts us over a pedestrian bridge, devoid of all other people this time of day, and stops at its crest to look over the Chicago River at dawn.

Neutral territory, it doesn't escape me.

After a moment, she faces me, leans herself so casually against the railing.

Game set, it seems. I wait for her to make the first move. She doesn't.

"Is my brother making you talk to me?"

"No." Her expression remains impenetrable, her voice level. "But I can tell he is very worried about you."

I stifle a scoff. Whatever grounds she has to think she can insert herself into our business is bullshit. "Thanks for your concern, but this is kind of a family thing."

Something flashes in her eyes, her head cocks to the side. "There is so much you do not know, Holly. But there is also so much that you _do,_ don't you? I can tell."

My arms cross. "What's it to you?"

"Everything," she says so simply. "It could cost me my life if the wrong information fell into the wrong hands."

It is impossible to tell if she's exaggerating. "Well, Michael hasn't told me much, if anything. You're safe, as far as I'm concerned."

"You're a smart girl. I trust you don't need your brother's guidance to find what you're looking for. So let me ask again," she leans forward. "What do you know?"

"I already told you. Not much."

"But there is something."

I look down to my running shoes, then back up to Kali. If I play my cards right, maybe we can both get something from this. "I know there's something going on with Charlie."

"She's been sick," Kali says immediately. "She's getting better, I hear."

"You know what I mean."

She tries to stare blankly, but I see her jaw tighten. "Yes. I know what you mean."

My breath hitches on the first sign that I may not actually be going insane.

"Nothing is ever what it seems, Holly. Keep digging like you are and I promise you'll lose your ability to discern what is realty from what is illusion." She smiles then, almost sweetly. "I trust you'll pass the message onto your friend. I'd hate to have to take unnecessary precautions."

Nathan, she must mean. My mouth falls open. I snap it shut.

The file, the one with Connie Frazier, it has to be hers. It has to.

Who the fuck is this chick?

I feel like I should warn Michael about her, but there'd be nothing to say. He already knows. I know he does.

"Enjoy your run," Kali straightens, and seems to think through her parting words before she warns, "I'd stay away from Daniel Reis if I were you. He's a… loose cannon."

"I don't know a Daniel Reis," I say, and surprise myself with my bravado, because technically I don't. As close as I've gotten with Nathan over these past few weeks, and as much as he's spoken of his brother, I've never actually met Danny.

Kali tilts a brow and walks away without another word.

I could run after her, easy. Keep up without so much as breaking a sweat, ask her why, why, why? Hit every last one of her cryptic dead ends, but my brain is reeling, exhausted enough as it is, and I am still not sure I want to know.


	16. Threadbare

I.

I am not stupid anymore.

There is a monster in the wall, I know now. I keep my distance. When it stretches out for me, I laugh in its wide-open face.

Does it have no idea how fast I am?

I crouch for the sprint, knowing I have it beat.

I bolt.

But I am as fast as I am foolish.

And the monster,

he's fast, too.

The monster, this time, gets me.

It's branch-like claws rip into the flesh of my ankle, scrape me at the bone. He drags me under the Christmas lights,

past the flickering lamps,

through the gash in the wall,

and I—

I never stood a fucking chance.

I wake into darkness, grasping at sheets and searching for breath. The clock glows 1:02 on my bedside table.

I should've known.

II.

"So what's with you and Nathan?" Tony asks Wednesday after Spanish. No matter how many times I try and pick up my pace, he matches my stride.

I don't even glance his way. "I don't know what you're talking about."

"Oh, come _on._ You've totally been dodging him for days now."

"Did he tell you that?" I ask evenly.

"He didn't have to. You stopped coming to lunch, he stopped bringing you up every five minutes, and you've _both_ been sulking around, like, all week. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to realize there's _something_ going on, so spill. What happened? You guys get into a fight or something?"

I huff, already exhausted by this nonevent. "What's your deal?"

"Huh?"

"Why do you care?" I deflect. "You gonna run and gossip to all your private school friends? How middle-school-girl can you get?"

I want to slap the smugness from his smirk. "So you guys _did_ fight."

"No," I assure. "We didn't. But frankly, Tony, is it any of your goddamn business?"

"To an extent, sure. You see, Nathan's a close, close buddy of mine, and while he can have a few…" he searches for the right word, " _assholic_ tendencies from time to time, he's a really great guy, and I'd hate to see him hurt."

My jaw tightens around the memory of Kali's words. _I'd hate to have to take unnecessary precautions._

"Good," I tell Tony before turning into my next classroom, abandoning him in the hall. "Then you and I are on the exact same page."

III.

I scribble down a single word in my notebook for last period writing that afternoon, same as the past two days. I don't even bother with a half-assed doodle.

I figure it doesn't matter anyway, being as Mrs. Larrabee swears she doesn't read them.

But then Thursday comes and the chalkboard's daily inspiration presses at the back of my mind, so simple yet it consumes me for the entire period: _A letter to a loved one._

Oddly enough, the first person it makes me think off is my father, sitting alone in that dingy apartment, so helpless after my mother kicked him out as easily as she had done me, still likely watching the clock, waiting for the day she calls and asks him to come home.

I think of Charlie, too. I want to protect her from every secret I've discovered, and especially the ones I haven't.

But it is Ryan I address in the pages of my composition book with only a few minutes left of class—though I have no intentions of ever sending the damn thing—because Charlie doesn't exactly read and Ted doesn't exactly care.

_Ryan,  
_ _Is it possible everything is a lie? Sometimes it feels like I'm living in some big illusion. You might think that makes me sound like I'm going crazy, but I think maybe I already am. I don't know. I just don't want_ _there to be any secrets between us. Everything makes so much more sense when you're around.  
_ _Yours, Baby_

The final bell rings, and I stack my notebook with the rest, but before I can escape, Mrs. Larrabee calls my name.

What'd I do this time? I turn on my heel to face her, my eyebrows lifted expectantly.

"Mind if I borrow you for a minute?" she asks with a gesture toward an empty desk at the front of the room.

I slide into the seat, and once the rest of the class has cleared, she takes the one next to me.

She begins by simply asking, "How's the adjustment going?"

"Fine, I guess."

"Miss Wheeler… Holly… I think we both know you haven't been yourself this past week. You aren't required to open up to me, or anyone, during your time here, but I want you to feel like you _can_ if you ever find yourself wanting to—"

Is this really what she's keeping me behind for? "Thanks, but like I said, everything's going great here."

I figure she must be someone's mother because she gives me the Look, the one like she knows more than we are both letting on, and she's got it down pat. I shift beneath it.

"Holly, you should know that I'm a woman of my word. I don't read the journals, so I don't know what you write about, but I'm glad that you are. I don't know what your situation is like, but I hope you have somebody you feel comfortable talking with about it, even if it's just me. And I hope you keep in mind all the resources we have here at Thaddeus Academy for you. Sometimes all it takes to feel better is someone willing to lend an ear."

Easy for her to say. I don't need a shrink. I don't need a professional, let alone my own family, to listen and tell me I've gone absolutely insane when I already know it.

Besides, what I'm up against is something that isn't supposed to exist in this world. Nathan and I tried and failed to make sense of it. How was anyone else supposed to understand?

Mrs. Larrabee scribbles down a counselor's email address and telephone number on a notepad and tears off the page, presses it into my hand. "You are never as alone as you think you are, Holly. Especially not here. Now, I don't doubt that your experiences are unique—everyone's are—and that sometimes the things you may be struggling with seem like they'd be unfathomable to some…" she reads my mind, and I look up at her then, "but you are among your peers here. If I told you to go classroom to classroom until you find a student, a faculty member, who comes from a house with no pain, you'd never find them. It is impossible. There will always be someone who understands, someone who will listen as you speak your truth, even if they have to pretend to believe it until they actually do."

She stands and reaches for my journal, places it on the desk before me.

"Like I said, I don't know what you're writing, but I hope it's your truth. _Yours._ As you see it now. And I hope someday soon you find the courage to share it with someone. I think you'll feel better when you do."

She smiles in that maternal way of hers and turns back to shuffling papers on her desk.

I find myself hanging back still, flipping mindlessly through the pages of my notebook until I stumble on a blank one that feels _right._ And something in me begs to write, to let the truth pour out the way I live it, and it starts like this:

A lie is only a story. And every story has some basis in reality. That's why when Coach Kelley asks me why the hell I'm so late to practice, I don't feel an ounce of remorse telling him, "Bathroom. Girl issues."

IV.

I try calling Ryan, but he isn't home.

"What? Where is he, then?" I ask his brother, Jordan. Track practice should be over by now, and Ryan hardly ever works Thursdays.

"I dunno. Out with friends, I think," says Jordan, a bitter reminder that while all my questions consume me here, Ryan's life carries on as scheduled. "When he gets back, I can tell him you called."

"Right. Thanks."

"Are you coming home over the summer?"

_Home._ What I wouldn't give to be laying back in my old bed, over-washed flannel sheets against my skin, small-town silence pouring in from my open window, and let a dark, dreamless sleep swallow me for however long it may.

"I hope so," I say.

"Me, too," he admits, and it makes me smile, the ache in my cheeks reminding me that it's been far too long since the last time I did.

After we hang up, I finally give in, dial the number for Karen.

She answers on the third ring, "Hello, this is the Wheelers," even though it's just her. Old habits really do die hard, I guess.

"Hi," I say. "It's me."

"Oh, Holly. How have you been?" she asks, voice careful. If she'd cared to reach out at all over these past few weeks, she'd know. But maybe she's been waiting for exactly this. For me to be the one to give in first.

"Fine," I lie, tell her exactly what she wants to hear. "Listen, I've been thinking. I think I've learned my lesson now. I made a mistake, a huge one, and I'm really, really sorry about it."

"Well, that's great. That's really great. I'm glad to hear the new school is working out for you," she says, and I believe her. "I hope you've made some new friends."

"Sure. Everyone's been super welcoming."

"Yeah?" she prompts.

I take a deep breath, find footing on some base of reality, and lay it on thick for her. "My friend, Nikki, and I were just talking about going shopping tomorrow, actually. She showed me around my first day, and we've been super close ever since. She even convinced me to go to the spring semiformal on Saturday, so we're planning a trip to go buy dresses."

"Oh!" I can hear the joy spark in Karen's voice, can almost picture the gleam in her eyes. "That'll be fun."

"Yeah, I think you'd really like her. Maybe, if I came home, she could come visit."

She is silent for a moment or two. Then, "Is that was this is all about?"

I purse my lips.

"Your father and I sent you to Chicago for a reason—"

"I know, I know. For Thaddeus." I need to backtrack. To start smaller. "But what am I supposed to do when school gets out? What if I just go back to Hawkins for summer vacation?" Two and a half months had to be enough time to convince Karen to let me stay there for senior year, to start up at Northern. It had to.

"No," is all she says.

_"_ _Mom_ — _"_ I plea like a five-year-old.

"I'm sorry, Holly, but you'll just have to figure out something else to do over break. I'm sure Nikki has plenty of things to show you around the city, but you cannot move back to Hawkins so soon, and that is final."

My throat chokes up and I swallow it down hard, because there is nothing I can say to her to make her realize I cannot stay here, either.

But I am trapped for God knows how long. Is how Nancy and Michael felt?

Then again, they escaped. There has got to be a way out for me, too. Right?

V.

It was one one of those beautiful days in March or April or something when spring felt like spring and I had no other choice but to walk the long way home from the school bus stop, my face tilted toward the warmth of the sun as I rounded the corner of Deerbourne onto Maple, when I found Michael in the kitchen, his neck bent over a letter on our mother's island, his hair a mop over the fingers he had buried his face in as he sobbed big, hiccuping sobs into them.

It'd probably been forever since I'd last seen him cry, especially like this. I didn't know what to make of it, just stood in the doorframe and watched until he seemed to calm himself down. I couldn't say how long it took. Maybe minutes, maybe hours.

"What's that?" I asked about the letter.

He looked at me, lips dropping apart in surprise, dark eyes bloodshot and puffy.

"Nothing," he said, his voice hoarse. He hurried to fold the letter, shoved it deep into his pocket, cleared his throat. "Nothing."

"I can keep a secret."

"It's none of your business."

"Is it what made you sad? Or did something else?"

He exhaled, rolled his swollen eyes. "You wouldn't get it."

He tried to move, to get past me, out of the kitchen, likely to go hide up in his room, maybe sob some more down in the basement, but I blocked his path as best I could. "You don't know that. I bet I would."

"No. You wouldn't." He half-scoffed, half-sniffled. His voice needed at least a week's worth of sleep to recover. "You're just a baby, Holly. You don't know anything."

"Am not!"

He tried and failed to escape a second time.

"I know lots of things. I got a hundred on my last time test."

"I mean _life_ things," he said down to me. "You don't know anything about life, or being a grown-up."

My ears turned hot.

_Good,_ I crossed my arms and decided then. Grown-ups were selfish and stupid, anyway.

Michael pushed past me successfully this time, headed for the stairs.

I didn't bother following him. I just waited until later, until he slipped out with some mutter to Karen about heading to Jane's, until his car backed out of the driveway. Karen was busy reading over a glass of white wine so I slipped into his room, found the letter sitting on his dresser. The one with the return address from Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The one that started with _Congratulations_ and ended with tear-stained acceptance for where his life was moving on so far away from here. For grievance over the house, the town, the life it was finally his turn to leave behind.


	17. Loverboy

I.

I've been loitering aimlessly around school long enough lately to miss my bus ride home, if only to avoid Nathan. It isn't until Friday that he catches on, or at least does anything about it.

Right before the city bus can pull away from the station, he bounds up the steps, feeds the meter.

I sink further back into my seat.

He plops down next to me, drops his bag to the floor between his legs. I turn up the volume on my Discman, watch the world begin to rumble past out my window.

He wastes no time, pulls a notebook from his backpack, scribbles something over a blank page before he presents it to me. It goes like this: Hear me out for 5 minutes. Then you'll never have to talk to me again. Deal?

I look him in the face for the first time in a long while. His brows are peaked, his eyes pleading. Teenage scruff patches his jaw, my own exhaustion reflected in his matching dark circles.

Then he pulls a pack of gum from his pocket and offers me a piece.

I accept.

The shadow of a smile flashes across his lips. He doesn't bother me for the rest of the ride.

When the bus pulls up to my stop, we both step off. I pull my headphones down around my neck.

"Five minutes," I say as we begin walking toward the brownstone. "Go."

He walks with his hands balled in his pockets. Inhales deeply, and lets his words fall out fast. "I get why you don't wanna see me. Really, I do. But I need to know. It's killin' me, Baby, and you're the only one who gets it. I'm tired but I can't sleep, I'm hungry but I can't eat. I can't even fuckin' look at him, 'cause it makes me feel sick, and I've got no idea how I'm supposed to ask—"

"Who?"

"Danny," he says like the name has turned sour. "I need you—"

I shake my head, stop him there. "Nathan—"

He doesn't back down. "I need you. You're the only one who can help me. You know all the right questions to ask. All I need is to figure out how he's part of this all, I swear. That's it. Then we can be done. We'll put all this behind and be normal people who are normal friends and do normal things. Or, if you really want, you never have to talk to me again, and I'd get it."

All I can think of is Kali, what she threatened if we kept digging. My voice is nothing more than a whisper. "I can't."

"Please." He steps in front of me, stopping me in my path, and takes me by the shoulders, bores his desperation into my eyes. "Please. I'm fuckin' beggin' you. Please help me. He's my brother…"

Pull the right loose thread and a whole sweater will come undone, no matter how carefully it was knit together. Whether I like it or not, Nathan is the only person in the world who gets where I am right now. The only person I can talk with like Larrabee wants me to.

No matter how badly I want to take it all back, it's too late. The only way out is through.

My face gives me away too easy, and he has me in a bear hug before I even finish telling him, "Let me think about it."

I find myself hugging him back, the exhaustion deep in our bones finally taking a moment to rest.

II.

We spend the rest of the walk making theoretical plans for how and when we would talk to Danny, if only for my consideration.

"By the way," he says, "would you still wanna come to his show tomorrow? Or would that be weird now?"

I frown, considering, and that's when my eyes land not only on Michael's car already out in front of the brownstone, but on the all too familiar old Ford Expedition parked behind it. "The hell?"

I am bounding up the front steps in no time. The door is already unlocked, the security alarm already disabled, and before I can process any of it, Summer is there, tossing her arms around my neck.

"What are you doing here?" I ask through her strawberry-shampooed hair, through a state of shock.

"Surprise," she giggles, then pulls back a bit, assesses me in my school uniform. "Wait, this actually doesn't look half bad on you. You've totally got the legs for it. Don't you think, Frazier?"

He was so silent, standing there at the sidelines with my brother, and I was so caught off guard by Summer that I didn't get the chance to notice until she pointed him out, but he was there. Of course he was there; it was his hand-me-down car out front, after all. He still smiled like it was the easiest thing in the world, his arms still felt the same around me.

"I can't believe you're here. Did you skip school for this?"

Ryan squeezed my middle tighter. "I promised you I'd visit, and your brother said it'd be a good weekend to come by."

I pull away, search his gorgeous, glowing face. "When'd you decide that?"

"When I picked up the phone and you weren't home," Michael answers for him.

And, of course, Michael was the one who orchestrated this. Was this his next line of defense? Did he ask them to come here to distract me? Or am I really that paranoid?

Is that idea what churns my stomach more, or is it the image of Connie Frazier's picture in a file on Michael's desk that my mind calls up?

I look to Nathan to see if the same cogs are turning in his brain, but he's in the midst of attempting an escape from this reunion.

"Nathan, wait—"

"We'll talk later," he promises, "once you've thought about it."

I can only nod.

He waves goodbye with a, "Later, Baby Spice," to me and a, "See ya," for everyone else, and slips back out the front door.

Summer claps her hands together. "Let's go do something! I'm going goddamn stir crazy."

I try my best to smile and nod. Ryan squeezes my shoulder.

III.

"So," Summer starts after successfully tugging me with her into the Giordano's Pizza bathroom. "What's Nathan's deal?"

"Please, Summer." I sigh, roll my eyes. "Not him. Anyone but him."

"Chill," she chuckles, leaning over the sink and reapplying her lipgloss. "I didn't mean it like that. You know he's not my type." That much was obvious. Presently, her type is junior college guys and history teachers, but things change. "I mean, why'd he dip like that? Can't hang?"

"No, no, we're just…" I search for the right words and come up only with the conversation Tony and I had. While his guess wasn't accurate, it was a whole lot easier to convey than the tangled truth. "Fighting."

"Ah," she smirks, caps her lipgloss. "Well, the best part about being friends with dudes is that they're all pretty stupid. They forgive and forget way too quickly."

I frown because, at least when it comes to Nathan, she's right. It's only me who hasn't, not that Kali hasn't given me good reason. "I don't know how easily I can get over it."

She begins fluffing her hair with her fingers. "If his friendship's worth it, then you'll find a way."

And that's exactly my issue. "I think he's the only one I've got here."

"Then that's worth something, Baby," Summer decides. "That's worth a lot. I say, call him."

I nod, look from her reflection to my tired own and back. Part of me hates the decision I'm about to make, but part of me knows now the only way out is through. "How would you feel about going to a concert tomorrow night? A local band."

Summer smiles that scheming smile of hers at me through the mirror.

IV.

Michael wasn't the only one who liked going to Sonny's with me; Summer did, too. She liked sitting in the booth by the back and ordering her coffee shake with extra whipped cream and seeing who could knot a cherry stem in our mouths the fastest.

What she didn't like was being made a fool of; being stood up by me, our plans slipping my mind for some stupid reason, while she sat in that booth by the back, alone and impatient.

She didn't talk to me for four full days after, and it took me three before I even realized what I did wrong, remembered I was supposed to meet her there.

I got to Sonny's early the next morning, and when I ordered a coffee shake with extra whipped cream to go, the waitress gave me and the clock each a confused look, but rang me out anyway.

The whipped cream was mostly melted by the time it got to Summer, but it didn't matter. Above anything else, it was an offering.

I set it down on her desk before English class began, and plopped wordlessly down in my seat adjacent.

She looked at it a long while, plucked and ate he cherry from the top, and passed the stem to me. "Thirty seconds," she said. "Go."

It tasted faintly bitter as I put it in my mouth and tugged it around with my teeth an tongue. Summer had always been better at it than me, but I finished just in time, presented her with it proudly.

She smirked, sipped her shake, and we moved on.

V.

I wait until I am sure Summer is asleep soundly beside me before slipping out of bed, down the hall and into the second guest room.

Something in me could tell Ryan wasn't sleeping, either, and I was right. I found him sitting up in bed, looking out his own oversized window at the city, his profile silhouetted by moonlight.

He looks at me, standing in the doorway, and smiles my favorite, sheepish smile. "It's too loud here," he whispers over the noise of the sleepless city outside.

I nod. "I know what you mean."

He slides over for me, and I am so grateful to shut the door softly behind me, crawl in beside him.

We lay on our sides, and he rests his forehead against mine. Form here, even in the dark, I can admire the light splatter of freckles across the bridge of his nose, the dip in the center of his lower lip.

He tucks a strand of hair behind my ear. "I wish I knew exactly what was going on in your head."

"Too much," I tell him, and it was supposed to be a joke, only it didn't quite come out funny.

"You can tell me anything, you know."

And I do. More than anything. If there's anyone I don't want to keep things from, it's him, but everything is far too complicated to even find a place to begin. "I know. I just… haven't made sense of a lot myself yet."

"Well, when you do…"

"But that's the thing." I twist over onto my back, stare up at the ceiling. "What if I don't want to anymore?"

Ryan props himself up on his elbow. "What do you mean?"

"I mean," I sigh. "There's something I'm trying to figure out. Like an equation, or a puzzle—or whatever. But what if the solution is too much? What if there's a reason Michael…" I stop myself before I give too much away.

Ryan studies me a while, then sits up again and studies the city through his window. He folds a hand into mine, and we both take a moment to admire the way our fingers fit together, the way his calloused palms feel so familiar to me.

"My dad wants to promote me, after graduation."

"Really?"

"Yeah. It was always the plan, but it didn't feel real until it actually started happening. I signed up to test for my license, and after that, he'll start putting me on my own job sites."

I squeeze his hand. He squeezes mine.

"I want to build us a house." He looks back at me, his smirk amused, but I know him well and his eyes give him away. This is something he's thought before, something he's been certain of for a while. "It might not be soon, exactly, and it definitely won't be as big as this one..." he adds, and it makes me smile a little. "I won't need any help from my dad to do it, so it might take me a while, but it's for you so it's gotta be perfect, you know?"

Part of me wants to stop him there, knows it is already too much for me. A bigger part of me is too afraid to say anything, in case he actually does.

"We'll have a kitchen with brand new, state of the art appliances and we'll laugh about it every day 'cause we'll probably just use the microwave most of the time. And the refrigerator will be huge. Way too big for two people, but it's got to be so we can hang up all of Charlie's coloring pages on it with those really stupid magnets my mom collects."

"She'd never give up her gondola bottle opener."

"Then we go to Vegas and buy our own," Ryan decides with a laugh, lays back down with me. "Or Brooke would steal it for us. And Sophie, she'd make us a painting to hang in our living room, right over the fireplace, but mostly we'd sit outside, 'cause we'll have this big porch that wraps all the way around, with one of those swings and everything. And even if it's a way too hot, or even if we're out there freezing our asses off, we'll sit with a stereo so we can listen to all the best music and just watch the goddamn grass grow because we'll be so fucking happy we won't know what else to do with ourselves."

The house without hurt, the one Mrs. Larrabee told me it was impossible to find, comes as an image clear as day to me.

And I think I can understand it, now, why my father bought the pretty house at the end of the cul-de-sac. It's the same reason Michael settled down in Chicago, in the brownstone not for himself, not even for Charlie, for a life he wanted to give Jane.

Just because no one's found it yet, does that mean it can't ever exist? Or are we that stupid for hoping we could be the exception?

"We've just got to make it through high school first," Ryan promises, "but we're so close. You've only got one more year, and then this is all over."

If only it were that simple. "This is my family. That doesn't just disappear." Try as they might.

"So am I," he insists. "So is Summer. So is Nathan, maybe, I dunno. Sometimes we don't get to choose, but sometimes we do. You know what I mean?"

And I do. We always have choices. Always.

I turn my head to look at him, his dark eyes so wide and sincere, and know I am happy with mine.

I kiss him then, and the way he kisses me back makes me believe Ryan is happy with his, too.

"Solve your puzzle," he decides for me then, tucking me under his chin, "and if it's too much, we'll deal with it then. But if the reason you started matters that much, I think anything will be better than living your life wondering."

He's right. Summer is, too. For once, the world feels smaller in the good way. Far less overwhelming, far less lonely.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow, sorry this up a lot later than I'd like for it to be! These past weeks have been insanely busy between starting a new semester, training for a new promotion, and having family visit from overseas that I've only really been home to sleep. As a result, I'm so sorry (as always) for any editing mistakes I may have missed. I'm settling into this new schedule now, however, so hopefully, I'll have the next update ready for you guys soon.


	18. Ragtag

I.

It is through the cloud of aerosol fumes and over-sprayed perfume that I learn how to breathe again.

Summer lets me borrow her miniskirt, sets me down at the end of my bed and begins swiping shadows around my eyes, gloss across my lips.

We told Michael and Jane we were going to that stupid spring dance thing—Nathan assuring them it was perfectly normal at Thaddeus to bring dates from other schools. It is one version of a lie I've told time and time again, and the nostalgia of it almost gives me the same jolt it always used to.

When she's finished, Summer straightens to admire her work with a grin. "Baby's back."

And she's right. I feel, without even looking in the mirror, more my old self—more Baby over Holly—than I have in weeks.

"We need to figure out what shoes you're going to wear," she decides, and pulls open my closet only to frown at its emptiness.

She opens her mouth to start off on something when Jane walks in, a small smile on her lips, a smaller box in her hand.

She places it in mine and nods for me to flip it open. Inside sits a pair of pea-sized pearl earrings.

Before I can ask, she explains, "They were my mother's. I never got my ears pierced—and who knows; Charlie might not either—so if you want, you can wear them for all of us."

My lips part, but no sound comes out.

Jane speaks of her father—Hawkins' own Chief Hopper—plenty, but never her mother. At least, never to me. I do not take it lightly.

There is no way I can think to respond, so I oblige speechlessly. Walk over to the full-length mirror behind my door and fasten them on, like all the times as a kid Karen invited me into her jewelry box.

And suddenly, looking in the mirror with my makeup done, my hair tucked behind my heirloom adorned ears, Baby and Holly both exist at once, meeting so tangibly here for the first time.

Summer, appearing alongside Jane in the mirror behind me, smiles approvingly.

"Pretty." Jane squeezes my shoulder.

I take in the smoked eyeliner, the frayed hem of the skirt showing off much more of my legs than it ever would of Summer's, the anything-but- _pretty_ of it all, Karen would assure, and swallow hard. Remind myself that I am not, never have been, the Baby who is soft and sweet and pretty. "You think?"

Jane nods. "Promise."

II.

Taylor Davies always threw the biggest parties, not only in Loch Nora, but in all of Hawkins, and Summer and I were always sure to make an appearance.

Only problem with Summer and big parties, though, was that she had always been small and social, easily swallowed by the tangle of bodies, the sway of the bass.

Eventually, someone would end up pointing me in her direction, or else she'd stumble across me herself, but on the night of Davies' end-of-year party early last summer, she'd still been nowhere to be found when the police turned up.

I don't know who uttered the word first, but it spread in murmurs through the house, down to the basement, like wildfire. _Cops. Cops. Cops._

The music shut off seconds before the lights were cut, and adrenaline shot through me, all too aware of the alcohol on my underage breath, sloshing around in my underdeveloped brain.

So I did what I do best; I ran. Everyone headed toward the stairs, up and out, but I pressed back against the current, headed into the laundry room, over the washing machine, out the narrow basement window.

I fumbled to my feet and shot into the night, through the sprawling expanse of grass, my sight set on the fence I was going to have to hurdle into the neighbor's backyard.

But a cop got there before me, planted himself right in my path. "Not so fast, kid."

The hand on his gun holster made me stop short, but it was his voice that caught my breath.

This wasn't just any cop, his silhouette becoming more and more recognizable.

"Again, Wheeler?" Chief Hopper asked, voice peeved.

My arms could only lift like two dead weights. Like, _What can I say?_

"You're drunk," he accused.

"Want to arrest me?"

He shook his head, grabbed me by the arm, and lead me in the direction of the street where his Balzer had been parked. "I'll do you one better."

By this he meant driving me home, exchanging a few short, stern words about my behavior with Karen.

It took what felt like hours for him to finish the party bust, me waiting in the car, sifting absently through the contents of his glovebox, his center console, but eventually he reappeared, and the Blazer rumbled to life beneath us.

He tugged on his seatbelt, grumbled, "You're an even bigger punk than your brother was, kid."

Great. I couldn't even run from the cops without a familial comparison.

I rolled my eyes, slouched back in the seat, and Hopper and I drove the way to Maple Street in silence.

Soon as we pulled in, Karen sent me to my room. Fine by me.

I didn't bother taking off my makeup or changing out of my shift dress, just collapsed back onto my bed and tried to lull myself to sleep.

But my head still swam, the room tilted around me, and my stomach flipped over nauseous.

I managed, by some miracle, to pull myself from bed, pad over to the bathroom in time to heave my guts into the toilet.

The cold tile felt renewing underneath me. I got up and splashed chill water on my face from the sink.

I propped myself against the counter as I brushed my teeth, gave myself a good, long look in the eye. Admittedly, my reflection looked half-dead, almost in the cool Addams Family way with my mascara flaking black dust over my cheeks, but not really.

Karen noticed, too. She appeared in the mirror behind me, eyes crinkly and weary and old, shaking her head, crossing her arms.

I kept on brushing, kept on hoping she'd yell.

But she never did. Never. Instead, she asked, "Do you really want to be _that_ girl, Holly?"

_What if I already am?_ I didn't. Just spit out Colgate and stomach acid down the sink.

III.

By the time Summer and Jane and I get downstairs, Ryan and Michael are well invested in some Playstation game. I look between the two of them, their faces so set in concentration. The image in the folder of Connie Frazier is again called up in my mind.

Does Michael know who Ryan is? He has to…

Summer huffs and steps in front of the TV.

Michael tries to lean around her, manages to pause, and Ryan throws his arms up in exasperation. "The hell?"

"Please don't tell me you're wearing _that."_ Summer arcs an unimpressed brow at Ryan's usual combination of khakis and rolled-up long sleeves.

"What's wrong with this?" He does a double-take at himself, then up to me, helpless.

"What's _wrong_ with this?" Summer asks. "Where do I start? Baby, please tell him to change."

Michael gives me a wide-eyed look, but I can only laugh and let the realization hit me once again just how much I've missed them.

The doorbell rings and Nathan is exactly on time. "Lookin' posh, Spice," he tells me as I let him in, so stupid I laugh.

He's cleaned up his casual attire, himself, opting for dark jeans and a colorfully patterned button-up. He looked far less exhausted than the last time I saw him.

"Thank _God,_ Nathan, you're a regular patron-fucking-saint," Summer says when she sees him. Then, to Ryan, "Did you bring _anything_ like that?"

"I don't think I _own_ anything like that."

Nathan clears his throat. "Ready to go?"

Ryan damn near flies up off the couch, grateful for an end to this conversation. Summer shakes her head at him.

We make it halfway to the door before Jane stops us, passing Charlie off to Michael and insisting she needs a picture.

The four of us, the messy group we are, the one I manage by some miracle to glue together, arrange ourselves in our varying states of reluctance for a few shutter clicks of Jane's camera.

She sends us off with a, "Have so much fun!" and Nathan's careful gaze lingers on her, then Michael for just a mere moment too long, measuring every last word, every last movement.

We file out the front door, and as Michael shuts it behind me, he gives me a Ted-inspired look that says, _don't be out too late,_ and I give him one right back that says, _what's it to you, anyway?_

IV.

Ryan's car smells the same as it always has, and sinking back into the passenger seat beside him feels a lot like heading home.

Nathan tells him to take the next left, and Summer leans over from the backseat to turn up the stereo's volume.

"So, Nathan," she begins, "what instrument does your brother play?"

"Drums."

She hums, but only I can hear the appraisal behind it. "How long has be been living in Chicago?" she asks instead of what she really wants to know; _How old is he?_

I shoot her a glare. She gives me that wide-eyed w _hat?_ look of hers, but smirks like we share a secret. Like she knows that I know all her games far too well by now.

"Couple years," Nathan says simply, not falling over himself to impress her in the slightest. For some reason, it makes me smile.

She picks up on it, too, trying her hardest not to pout about it.

It isn't until the music changes that she lets her agitation show, complaining over the iconic chord progression, "Ugh. I'm sick of this song."

"I love this song," says Ryan, rubbing it in a little too enthusiastically after the whole outfit disagreement.

"Everyone loves this song," says Nathan.

Ryan turns the volume up high and the boys start singing along, increasingly passionate and incresingly terrible.

I look back at Summer and grin. She rolls her eyes halfheartedly, stifles a smirk pulling at her lips.

"C'mon, Baby Spice," Nathan encourages with a shake of my shoulder, so I start to sing along, too.

And as we all break into the chorus, even Summer can't help herself anymore. Just like that, driving up Lake Shore, at the top of our off-key lungs, we all sing:

_Because maybe / you're gonna be the one who saves me / and after all / you're my wonderwall_

And it's so stupid that it makes my lungs remember air and I come up with a laugh—genuine and rib aching—instead of a choke.

V.

We pull up a few blocks from some punk house in the city's northeast and walk the rest of the way.

Outside, kids swarm in and out the front door like bees to hive. Mostly they're a few years older, and mostly they're already drunk.

I can feel the base echoing in my chest even from outside, can smell the cigarette smoke curling in the night air.

The bouncer—if you can even call the troll of a college dropout type guarding the door that—ushers in Summer and I, no questions asked, but stops the boys with a hand on Nathan's chest. "Five bucks each."

Ryan furrows his brow, reaches for his wallet.

"Dude, no," Nathan stops him. Then, to the troll, "I'm Danny's brother. Danny Reis."

The guy only blinks. The name means nothing to him. Either that, or he simply doesn't care.

Summer rounds her eyes.

Some other guy, short in stature and long in hair, pushes past Summer and me, tells the troll, "Hey, man, they're with me."

The troll steps aside, allows Ryan and Nathan to pass without toll.

"You were really gonna _pay_ him?" asks Nathan.

"Did Baby forget to tell you?" asks Summer before Ryan has the chance to defend his goodwill. "Frazier doesn't party. We are blessed to have him here tonight."

Ryan forces a smile, guilty.

"Long time no see," our long-haired savior says to Nathan, then to the rest of us, "This way," and leads us farther into the house, farther toward Danny, farther toward what feels increasingly like the truth.

Because something in my gut nudges at me, something I can be sure of. Tells me this all ends tonight, and he sooner it does, the sooner I can start over.


	19. Sellout

I.

The basement's ceiling hangs low, humid with beer sweat and clouded with smoke.

There isn't so much a stage as there is a couple pieces of plywood elevated by cinderblocks, half-covered by a misshapen rig, cluttered with hand-me-down instruments and miles of half-coiled cables.

Chicago's finest delinquents loiter around, drinks in hands, and the short boy with the long hair tunes a guitar.

"What are they called again?" I ask Nathan, if only for something to do. The anticipation presses on me as we stand there at the sidelines.

"Amistad."

"What kind of music do they play?" asks Ryan.

Nathan beams proudly, despite himself. "The good kind."

A bass player materializes, raises his mic stand, and plucks at the same three notes over and over. Summer cracks a remark, but my head is already drifting so far from here.

The last thing I expect is to notice him—Danny—when I see him. And then I do.

He and his brother don't look the same in all the ways I look like Michael, or Charlie looks like Jane. No, Danny's eyes are wide where Nathan's are narrowed, his cheekbones sharp where Nathan's are full. His skin is a few shades lighter and his hair is far too buzzed and his glasses are nothing I could ever see Nathan wear, but I know Danny when I see him, even before he steps up to the stage, tapes down setlists, adjusts the position of the drum kit's crash symbol, because there is something about the way he carries himself. Something so distinctly familiar, like I've seen it played out a million times before. Like lives his life a half-second off measure. Something that would've slipped right past me if I didn't suspect any better.

Danny gives an authoritative jerk of his chin toward someone at the back of the room. The music thumping over the stereo is cut and the lights are dimmed and the whole crowd hushes to attention.

The long-haired guitarist steps up to the mic, offers a rushed introduction.

A girl from the back whoops, "Marry me, Griffin!" and earns a laugh.

Griffin starts in, his guitar providing a shrill riff in return. Danny and the bassist fall right into rhythm, all together arranging and rearranging the same four chords, Griffin's half-sung, half-shouted melody hidden somewhere inside, music overtaking every dark and dusty corner of the space. Amistad preforms much more than they play.

Around Ryan and Summer and Nathan and me, the party crushes itself into the basement, surges toward the makeshift stage—a hundred kids move as one, beer sloshes over the sides of Solo cups.

Instinctively, I squeeze Ryan's hand. He looks nervous, too.

I look to Nathan. He nods his head along to his brother's drumbeat, mouths every word to Griffin's indistinguishable lyrics, goes through all the motions he's supposed to, but it's like he told me—he can hardly bring himself to look at Danny.

I catch Summer frowning at the three of us. "Dance with me," she shouts over the music and into my ear, tugs at my free hand.

"Summer—" I start, but my voice is drowned out.

Her mouth forms my name right back, and she tugs again.

The thing about Summer Kaine-Callahan is that she always gets what she wants, too. She pulls me successfully from the sidelines, from Nathan and Ryan, and we lose ourselves in the swell of the crowd.

II.

When the set is over, when the lights come back up, when the crowd begins to disintegrate, carrying the party back upstairs, for now, Summer takes the opportunity to pull me toward the stage and chat up the bassist helping reset for the next band.

I scan the dwindling crowd for Ryan or Nathan, but can't spot them anywhere. Maybe they went upstairs already. Maybe they're waiting right outside. Maybe they slipped away along with Griffin, who is also nowhere to be found, and I'd missed it.

"No, I'm from Indiana," I hear Summer say, her voice oozing a sickly sweet apology. "I'm visiting my friend for the weekend."

She nudges me in that subtle, practiced way of hers, the way the bassist won't even notice, and I snap back to attention.

"Just the weekend?" he asks.

Summer nods. "But I'm sure I'll be back. It's my first time here, and she just moved, so there's a lot we need to do."

"Well, in that case, I can totally give you guys a few suggestions. Things you wouldn't wanna miss, y'know?"

Summer absolutely beams at him. Arcs a brow and asks me and asks, "How angelic is that?"

But I can't bring myself to say anything in return because that is when I notice Danny is staring intently at me. Maybe my mind is playing tricks again, but maybe he shakes his head ever so slightly at me. "Ben," he interrupts. "You should get them some drinks."

"You just want me to bring you a beer, don't you?" Ben teases, but hops down from the stage regardless.

Danny holds his hands up in a way that is so distinctly _Nathan._

Ben asks me and Summer, "You like beer?"

"Sure," says Summer.

Ben makes his way for the stairs. I flick wide eyes toward his back as if to tell her, _Go with him._ Summer smirks and takes up the offer, sauntering off after him.

And all there is left is me standing before the stage, Danny standing behind the drums, and a few kids still hanging around in the crowd, chatting amongst themselves.

This is it, that gut instinct tells me. This is where I find Nathan his answers. This is where we start to move on.

Only, Danny opens his mouth first, and his words sound like an accusation. "How'd you hear about the show?"

A couple strangers turn their heads toward the edge in his voice. I offer the shape of the truth. "A friend."

His jaw tightness and he gives a directional jerk of his chin. I find myself lead around the side of the stage, to a quieter corner of the basement.

He crosses his arms over his chest, hisses, "What do you want?"

I am officially caught off guard. "What?"

He rolls his eyes, worse than Michael. "Don't play dumb with me, alright? You think I'm blind? You look exactly like your brother, and I thought I made it pretty damn clear to Kali that I'm not fucking interested, so why are you here? What more do you want from me?"

"Wait, wait, wait. Told Kali you're not interested in _what?"_

His brows furrow, a mirror of my own. His mouth falls open before he snaps it shut. He eyes the basement, the kids standing around, then grabs a guitar case, shoves it in my hands. Along with a few boxes for himself, he takes the lead.

III.

Up and out of the house, across the street and a block further down, a white van idles against the curb. Nathan is there with Griffin, loading cases and boxes into the back.

The former notices us approaching first. His eyes flicker from me to his brother and back again, tension setting in his jaw.

"Give us a minute, will you?" Danny asks the boys.

Griffin nods, wipes his hands over his jeans.

Nathan ignores the request, asks me instead, "Where'd Summer go?"

"Still inside," I say, glancing around and coming up empty. "Where's Ryan?"

"Lookin' for _you."_

"Jesus fuck. You know each other?" Danny inhales a sharp, dreadful breath. He looks pointedly, dumbfoundedly at Nathan. "Do you… Do you _know_ about this?"

Nathan looks struck where it hurts. "About what, exactly?"

"We don't know anything," I interject. "Not really."

Danny and Nathan both eye me.

Griffin gives a low whistle, tugs at Nathan's sleeve. "C'mon man. Let's give 'em a minute."

"No," says Nathan. Challenges again, "No. Know about what?"

"Just listen to Griffin, man." Danny's words are still carefully sharp.

"You don't get to do that to me," says Nathan, increasingly desperate. "Just tell me, man."

Danny keeps his arms crossed over his chest. "Tell you what?"

"Tell me what I should know!"

They stare each other down. Silence falls over our tiny crowd, stretches down the street. Even the party, I swear, stops for a beat. Danny's voice is low and full of thunder, "You shouldn't know anything."

Nathan falters under the weight, looks to me, helpless, reaching.

He is just as much a younger sibling as I am, and I hate that it has to be me who says, "You should go back inside," I try and keep the _We'll talk,_ the _It'll be okay_ written across my face. "See if you can find Ryan and Summer."

There is a rhythmic clench and unclench of his jaw. I can see his last good fight disintegrate inside him. This is the last chance we've got, and there's nothing left for him to offer.

 _I'll get your answers,_ I try and tell him telepathically. He actually nods like he understands, or at least pretends to, and follows Griffin out from under the streetlamp, into the dark of the night, back toward the thump of the party.

 _I'll get you your answers,_ I keep trying, in case he didn't get the message the first time. _I promise._

I just hope that he can hear me, and that it's not a lie.

IV.

Danny perches himself in the van's open trunk. His fingers shake as he lights himself a cigarette. He offers one to me and I accept it gratefully, the wind swaying his lighter's little flame dangerously close to my cupped palm.

Minutes pass and I don't bother to fill them with words. Neither does Danny. His voice is hollow when he eventually asks, "How do you know him?"

Nathan, of course, he means. "School."

Danny scoffs. "Small fuckin' world, huh?"

If only he knew the half of it. "How do you know Michael?"

"Eleven."

"Eleven?" Strings to bring together different corners of my mind, to form the shape of some buried semblance.

"El," he jogs my memory, and it clicks. The passport, the inscription, the tattoo. "Jane, I guess."

_Eleven._

"You know her, too?" Somewhere there is an ache deep in my chest. All along, she's been the missing piece. I'd suspected she had to know what Michael does, but not once had I questioned her involvement much past the inital gut-feeling that should be up on that Double-Blind board.

Danny nods, plumes smoke toward the sky. "She reached out first. Found me for them."

 _"Found_ you?" Should _stalking_ be added to their growing list of occupational skills?

"Thought I told you not to play dumb with me." He arcs a brow, another gesture he and Nathan must mirror from each other."You _really_ don't know?"

I shake my head, honest.

He flicks the butt of his cigarette. Says again, "Small fuckin' world."

I don't know what else there is to say, so I take another drag, watch the orange glow of the ember, and come to find Danny watching me in that serious way of his again.

"So what _do_ you know?"

It is a test, I am sure, but it calls back the list I kept hung on the closet wall, then charred at the bottom of the bathroom waste bin, now forever imprinted in my memory.

"She's like you somehow," I say, because it feels like a good enough place to start. After all, he has a number, too. "Jane."

"So nothing," he concludes.

"That's what I told you. Isn't it?"

Danny shrugs. "Your brother has tricks."

I scoff at the understatement. "I'm not working with him, if that's really what you think. I don't even know what he does."

"Because you _really_ don't know anything."

I smirk. "Not really."

He looks at me a moment longer. Decides to say, "You're wrong about me. I'm not like Jane."

 _I wanna know,_ Nathan's half-hysteric voice echos in my head, _why his number's different._

"No?"

"No," says Danny.

So far this cigarette isn't doing what I need in order to swallow my nerves, but I challenge anyway, "Then who?"

"Charlie."

The name takes a second to sink, so decidedly unwelcome to this conversation. It grips me so tightly, prickles pure heat under my skin, that I need to sit on the van's bumper, too.

Danny doesn't seem to mind. Just ashes his cigarette over the pavement.

"You've met Charlie?"

"No, no, they just told me about her. Said they needed me to help…" He trails off like he's already said too much.

I keep pressing on. "With what?"

He twists his face, culls his words carefully. "She's strong. More than any of them."

That, finally, I understand. "The lights…" Nathan had been right. My mind hadn't been playing tricks. Somehow, someway she'd done it.

But there wasn't a someway. Shit like that doesn't happen. Shit like that is _impossible…_

"So you _do_ know something." He smirks, almost smug. "Shit's scary, right?"

But that can't just be it. How can he seem so casual about this? " _How?_ I mean, I've seen her do it. _Nathan's_ seen her do it, but even watching it happen… There's no way."

Danny chuckles dryly with himself. "That seems to be the million-dollar question."

"One you know the answer to," I say and I'm sure of it.

"I mean, not really…"

"But you can do the same," I say. "You and Charlie are the same."

My eyes drop to his left wrist, enclosed in the off of his flannel.

"Somethin' like that," he says, soon catches me staring. He swallows a little too hard, pulls his sleeve into his palm. "I thought you didn't know anything."

"Not really," I remind him. "But we figured out enough."

Something like abhorrence flashes over his face at the idea of his brother's involvement. He doesn't let it stay long. "It's not there anymore, anyway."

My eyebrows scrunch together. Danny leaves his cigarette dangling from his lips and pushes up his sleeve, revealing an arm covered in black and grey tattoos, and on his wrist, a dark-petaled rose is inked over where a 102 should be—used to be. A twine bracelet identical to Nathan's encircles it all.

"It's not me. I don't want any part of it. That's what I keep telling Kali. She's up my fuckin' ass about it, pretends we're all part of some cool club, but I was way too young when I got out to buy any of that bullshit."

Kali. Whatever Jane is, she is, too. I really should've known.

I could ask exactly why his number's different like Nathan wants to know. I could ask a million different questions to get the answers I'd silently promised I would, but now that the night feels wide open I can't help but ask, "Kali and Michael—What do they want from you?"

"To join their army," he says, smirks at his own joke. But the thing about jokes is that they always have some sort of basis in reality. If there is an army, there's a war worth fighting. "What does Nathan want from you?"

"To infiltrate," I tell him. Then, more seriously than anything, "He deserves to know."

"That's too dangerous," he whispers. The battle is in his eyes and I have no choice but to believe it. "The world isn't safe for people like us. Your brother does a good job of watching out for his family, I'll give him that, but if Nathan ever found out how big this really is..."

Nathan, who doesn't know how to do a single thing without his whole heart, without a plan to push back. Nathan, who refuses to fall into line, to play by the rules.

"Anarchy," I finish.

We sit under the crushing weight of it all for minutes or hours. Then, he admits, "I wouldn't know what to say… If I did. I don't like talking about it. Like I said, it's not me anymore."

"You told me…" I say stupidly, because I understand his reasoning before I even truly realize it, before he can attempt to explain.

He stubs his cigarette out on the bumper. "You're not on anyone's _side._ You don't want anything else from me."

It's exactly like Mrs. Larrabee said; we all need someone to suspend all judgment, to listen and believe. Nothing more, nothing less. Anyone else would think his story impossible, even just the breadcrumbs he fed me. Nathan, Kali, Michael, for one reason or another, would ask—have asked—for something much more out of him. Something he can't offer anymore.

 _Pending_ it said by his name, up on that board when it shouldn't be, when he didn't want it to be, accompanied by everything that needed to be tested.

They are experimenting on people, and Kali is pressuring me to keep out of it just as she is pressuring him to be part of it.

The thought sends a shiver through me. I do not open my mouth and say anything about it, and neither does Danny.

Tonight is a night for the truth, and we are both already sure of this.

V.

The tires skid against ice, the castle goes up in smoke, the monster catches its prey, and the brother becomes more and more a stranger.

It is getting hard to breathe again and I toss my cigarette to the pavement. The part of me that is still nine years old wants to go home, but the part of me that is me now isn't sure where that is anymore.

The sky opens up and starts to sprinkle down rain.

The words pass through my lips without first asking for permission. "I should go."

My legs begin to move on their own accord, hopping down from the van and starting me away.

"Hey," Danny calls after me. Then, when I don't stop, _"Wheeler."_

I look back.

"You won't tell Mike we talked. Right?"

He still sits there in the back of the van, the streetlights cast harsh shadows across his face. Behind his glasses, his eyes are wide like a little boy's, and we are far too young to deal with these things.

Why would I tell Michael? "Sure."

I continue down the street, up to the house, past the troll, and into the heart of the party, a living, breathing thing.

Downstairs, another band begins their set, and everyone presses toward the basement. Everyone except me. One moment, I am there with too many people and the next I am there alone in someone else's living room with the scattered bottles and cups and debris. There is a couch with a gaping hole in the cushion. There is a floorboard with a crack down the center.

There is a painting hung on the wall of what seems like nothing in particular.

It is there, where I stand looking at it, that Nathan finds me first.

"Oh my God. Hey. What'd he—"

Something in my face makes him cut himself off.

Summer comes spilling in after him. Her eyes flick from me to the painting to Nathan and back. "What'd I miss?"

"Isn't it pretty?" I ask her.

"Are you high or something?" Steps up and sniffs my hair. Asks Nathan, "Is she high?"

"I'm not _high_."

Ryan rounds the corner not too far behind her, already knowing what to do. "Let's just go. I'll take you home."

"You will?"

He nods, even smiles a little, takes my hand and leads me out the front door.

But the thing about Ryan is that he's a liar, too, if he has to be. I don't think he knows where my home is now any more than I do.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow this semester's been wild! I haven't had nearly as much time to work on this as I'd like to. Over the summer, I kept a pretty good upload schedule, but I've been struggling with it lately and recently came to the conclusion that I'd rather not rush just for the sake of getting something up. I'm sorry this one took me so damn long but I hope it's worth the wait.


	20. Wildfire

I.

I remember turning four, watching candle flames dance, wax spilling over, taunting the frosting of my cake. I can't recall what I wished for, only that I wanted nothing more than to reach out and touch them. So I did.

I remember prying the safety off every lighter. Scooching a few inches closer to the campfire. Blowing out matches moments before they reached my fingertips.

I remember I have always liked testing the flame. I've just never been fond of getting burned.

II.

The grey-faced brownstone towers three stories high, a fortress of stone owned by the ghost of a man my brother once knew.

A curtain swishes in one of the large, cast-iron framed windows. I look away.

Ryan cuts the engine, looks to me to decide what's next. I can't bring myself to move.

"Can you guys give us a second?" Nathan asks from the back.

Ryan and Summer both hesitate, exchange a look. They don't know anything, just that something's off. I nod my permission and they leave Nathan and me in the car.

For a while, we just sit there, him and I. Silence consuming us, chewing through muscle, working its way down to bone.

He wants me to tell him something, I am sure, but there is not much to say except, "We're fucked."

He doesn't try and bullshit me about it. Says, "Yeah." I love him for it.

"I don't know what to do… I live with him. And Charlie…"

Nathan waits moments or maybe years to for me to elaborate. I don't, and he doesn't push me, either. I love him for that, too. "What do you _want_ to do?"

It seems like such simple a question for such complicated a life. One woven so intricately it hardly leaves room for any whims.

But we always have choices. Always. And I'm the only one who made the ones that got me here. Maybe it's time I start acting like it.

So what _do_ I want? Honestly.

What I want is a fucking cigarette.

What I want is for this shit to be over.

What I want is to watch this facade burn.

III.

Michael is up in his office. Nathan offers to come with me, but this is something I need to do alone.

I stand silent in the doorway. He sits undisturbed on his throne, sifting through paperwork, taking a few moments to even notice me there.

He blinks at me when he does, pulls big brother up over himself like a security blanket. "You're home early."

It is now or never. I swallow hard, pull the words up from within me, start from the beginning. "Remember Nancy's friend? Barbara Holland?"

His mouth parts, eyes narrow. "I mean, yeah. _You_ do?"

"Sure," I say. I don't care if it's a complete lie.

"Have you been drinking?" he deflects.

"You'd know if I had, Ted." I roll my eyes, saunter further into the room, make a show of looking up and all around as if I'm taking everything in for the first time. The chalkboard by the far wall has been erased, the faint shape of Danny's name still ghosting the surface.

"I really wish you'd stop saying that."

"I really wish you'd stop trying to act like him."

"If I was trying to act like him I'd be half-asleep on the couch waiting for the next rerun of M*A*S*H."

I try not to scoff or smirk.

"I'm just trying to look out for you, Hols," he says, so achingly honest. "Keep you safe."

Heat rises within me. "You know, that's really fucking rich, Michael."

"Why? 'Cause you're so great at taking care of yourself now?" he condescends.

I take the chalk from the lip of the board. "I'm not a kid anymore, Michael."

"Could have fooled me."

"Maybe I really did," I say, writing _Barbara Holland_ across the surface of the blackboard, each letter more careful than the next. "She disappeared."

Michael sits back in his seat, eyes narrowed, contemplating me. "Yes."

"How come no one talks about it anymore? Around Hawkins."

He shrugs as if his own shoulders have far beyond exhausted the weight of this question. "It's Hawkins. People don't want to believe anything bad could ever happen."

"But we both know that's not true. Is it?"

He says nothing.

Two more names go up. Connie Frazier. Bob Newby. "They almost have nothing in common," I say. "Nothing except you."

"Don't do this, Holly." His words are even with a metallic edge. Razor-sharp.

"Why not?"

"I already told you—"

"You haven't told me shit."

"It isn't _safe."_

I'm tired of this dead-end excuse. "For who, exactly?"

"For everyone." His vote tightens. "This is bigger than us. Do you understand? Bigger than us or them, or Hawkins."

"But I'm just a kid, right? How much damage can I really do?"

He shakes his head at me, slow. Abruptly stands and looks around the room like some sort of answer or get-out-of-jail-free card is written somewhere on the wall. Rakes fingers through his hair. "I fucked up. I'll admit that. I never should've had you come here."

"Then why did you?"

"Where else would you've gone?"

Right. That's me: America's least wanted.

"Ted's probably."

He cocks an eyebrow at me, set in his disbelief. "You would've gone to _Ted's?"_

My jaw locks tight. My ears burst aflame. "You think I _wanted_ to come here, Michael? You think this has been _fun_ for me? I wasn't given an option. Karen doesn't care—"

Michael shakes his head vehemently. "That's not true. She still wants what's best for you."

God, I wish people would stop saying what they think is best for me and start punching me square in the throat instead. Cuts out the hell that builds up from my chest. I swallow hard. Tears prick my eyes. I hate the way my voice sounds when it shakes. "Yeah, she loved me so much she kicked me out. Is that it? Sent me to live with you like it would teach me something about crafting this perfect, expensive, utter fucking bullshit life."

His mouth drops open. For a second, he doesn't know what to make of me. His eyes default to contemplatively condescending.

He inhales, ready to come back, but don't let him. The words keep tumbling out of me and neither of us know what to do with them. "I mean, seriously. How long did you think you could keep shit a secret? Do you think I'm stupid? Do you think I can't figure things out? Did you think Charlie would miraculously be okay?"

He visibly stiffens. I've successfully struck his deepest nerve.

"When did you _start_ lying to me? Years ago? When I was born?"

"I never _lied,_ Holly—"

"Yes, you did! You did. You said what Charlie did was some weird electrical surge. You said Will's drawings were all just some Dungeons & Dragons shit. It's all been bullshit, Michael, ever since I got here."

I watch the color drain from my brother's face. Whatever dirt he'd been expecting me to dig up, it clearly hadn't included my monster.

He tries to speak again but I'm on a roll, and if I stop now I'm not positive I'll ever find the courage to start up again. "You keep so much from me and say its for my own safety, and that's what I don't understand. You won't even tell me what I'm supposed to be in so much danger of, and the more I think about it, the more it kinda starts to make sense. Why would you tell me when what you're really protecting me from is yourself?"

I stand there, arms crossed, breathless.

My heart pounds wildfire through my chest.

After a few moments, after he is certain I won't start up again, Michael asks, "Which drawings?"

Not exactly the response one expects to hear from their brother after blatantly accusing them of being a pathological liar. It takes me a second to be sure I heard him right. "What?"

"Which of Will's drawings are you talking about?" Maybe it's just me, but maybe he even sneaks a glance toward his filing cabinets.

"Tall. Long claws…"

"No face?"

"No face."

IV.

There are infinite sides to every story. This one, if started in the right place, would be about Will Byers. About how he and his brother grew up. About the countless afternoons he and his friends spent in Karen's basement, or alone in his room teaching himself to draw. About how exactly he got so sick. Never could get better.

This story, if started in the right place could be about Nancy Byers. Could be about Jim Hopper. About Bob Newby. But even then, there was some pinpoint in their life stories, some definitive shift, a line to trace directly back to the moment of change. To the nothing-will-ever-be-the-same. To Will Byers.

It is no coincidence because there is no longer such a thing.

Their stories, too, if started in the right place, would be about Will. About how all of us live in the same shadow, host the same monsters living under our beds. Or lying in wait between our walls. Or trapped inside our heads.

My brother pulls out a rendering of the monster, much more realistic, far more stomach-clenching than a kid's Crayola art. Refers to it as the Demogorgon. Asks me, _You've seen it?_ Over and over.

I nod my head yes, but what I mean is I haven't just seen it.

What I mean is, it still haunts me.

V.

There is a world where Will is sick and a world where he is dead and a world where he is neither.

Or so Michael explains.

I do not follow.

What does this have to do with where the monster comes from?

Michael rolls his eyes. "You've never heard the multiverse theory?"

"Should I have?" Last I checked, the only class I was passing was gym, but if any of my teachers had ever mentioned some shit like this, I am certain I would've remembered.

"Basically, it's what it sounds like. Multi. Verse." He breaks down the word for me as if I am five. "Multiple universes."

"Okay…"

"Infinite, even. And they exist right on top of one another. Layered, almost." He attempts a demonstration with his hands.

I nod for him to continue.

"You know Newton's third law? For every action, there's an equal and opposite reaction."

"Sure." I remember that much from physics class. Push something, and it pushes back.

"That sort of applies here. Equal and opposite reaction. But not in the way we're used to thinking about it." He takes the chalk from me, draws a line on the board. "For every decision you make, the equal and opposite exists somewhere else, in another universe. Like… running track. In this world, you joined the track team. The decision not to try out forked off. Created a new dimension. One where you never ran, never met Ryan," he draws a second one, right over the first. Then a third. "Or maybe deciding not to run crated a different situation where you met Ryan anyway. That's a third dimension. Maybe in this one," a new line, "you got a track scholarship. Maybe in another one, you got badly injured. Tore your ACL. Lost a scholarship, never go to college, spend your whole life living at Mom's. I don't know. Do you see where I'm going with this?"'

"Sounds like the butterfly effect." Sounds like science fiction. Or, better yet, like he's going crazy.

"Yes!" His eyes widen, childlike. "Every decision ever made in this world has accumulated into this very moment. You change one thing, you change the whole system. Only difference is those changes, those equal and opposite reactions, actually exist, actually happened someplace else. Some other universe. Right on top of the one we're in now." He draws a bunch more passionate lines. "That means there's an alternate universe where Mom and Dad never met, so we were never born. Stuff like that. But that also means there are universes where dinosaurs never went extinct. Where organisms never evolved into homo sapiens. Where all of human civilization has already collapsed by now, where nuclear wars took place, wiped out everything—"

"Is there somewhere you're going with this?"

He huffs like, out of everything he just said, _this_ is the complicated part. "So you have all these worlds, all these layers," he slows down, considers his words a little more carefully now. "With enough energy—I'm talking mass, mass amounts—a gate can be opened." He swipes his finger down the horizontal lines, creating a vertical one of negative space. "A portal between two dimensions which things can pass through.

Was he trying to play me for a fucking fool? Or have I been one this whole time? "So what you're saying is this monster, this Demon-gorgon-"

"Demogorgon," he rolls his eyes.

"is a dinosaur that crawled in through some gaping hole in the space-time continuum?"

"What? No! No. I mean—"

"Aren't you tired of this Michael? Of running around in circles."

"You don't have to believe me, Holly, but I'm telling you the truth. This is the basis of what I _do._ I research this, the energy, the molecular biology that opened the gate. This is what _this_ is," he gestures to the room, his life's work, all around us. "I have proof, and I have people who want to take that proof from me by any means necessary. _That_ is what is so dangerous. Them. Not me. Not me."

So, this is it. Nathan mentioned something like an army. This is what is worth fighting for. This is what the passports, the money, the gun all mean; ready to run at a moment's notice if his choices come down to saving this or his family.

"And Kali?" I ask, though what I want to say is, _And the people? The ones in the file, the ones erased from the chalkboard._ But I can't find the courage.

"What about Kali?"

"You wouldn't consider her dangerous?"

He shrugs, fumbles. "I might not always agree with what she does, but she has her reasonings."

"Aren't you her boss or something?"

"No, no. She doesn't work _for_ me, she works _with_ me. Closely with me. We want the same things, it's getting there that's the issue. But we're both up against the same thing; best to be on the same side."

"Well, what's it you want?"

The corners of his mouth turn, but it isn't quite a smile. "The same thing as you," he says. "The truth."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Big, big apologies that this took so long! In the deepest depths of self-doubt, I decided I hated the way I structured the original ending and scrapped then rewrote the final couple of chapters. I've spent so long working on this story, the last thing I want is to end it in a way I don't feel good about. That being said, there is one last chapter after this, however, it is double the length of my usual ones. It will be posted next week.
> 
> I can't thank enough those of you who have stuck with though this. I know I haven't exactly made it easy, but I hope I've made it worthwhile! xx


	21. Sundown

_ONE MONTH LATER_

I.

A lie is only a story. And sometimes stories are safer. But what would I know? I'm just a girl who fucked around with fire and ended up burned.

At least that's as much as I tell Mr. Ache.

I try not to stretch the truth too far, and he tries not to look too analytical as he scratches notes in his padfolio.

I found his email address, the one Mrs. Larrabee offered me, buried at the bottom of my backpack, excavated alongside the debris of other forgotten things.

I decidedly don't hate talking with him—Mr. Ache—or the meticulous cleanliness of his office, the tick of his wall clock, the crisp pleat of his pants. Don't hate the way he hums comprehension as he listens or tries to pry further into the deepest dead-ends of my thoughts and feelings toward my father. Because I promised myself I'd try and Ache promised me he could help.

"What's that you've brought this time?"

My composition book, the one from Mrs. Larrabee's class, sits patiently in my lap. She told us to keep them this last day, encouraged us to continue writing through the summer.

I almost dumped it in the trash by her door, but I couldn't find it within myself to.

"It's private," I say, to which he arcs a brow. "I don't think I want to show you."

"You don't have to show me anything. I'd just like to know what it is. What it means to you."

My thumb grazes the warped and worn corners of the pages. That's all it really is—bound paper, a stupid assignment, a participation grade. But it helped when nothing else did. When I really chose to try. "It's a story, I guess."

He hums. Scratches that down. "Fiction? Non-fiction?"

"Does it matter?"

I manage to earn myself a chuckle from Mr. Ache. "No," he agrees, "I suppose it doesn't. Some of the best memoirs feel stranger than fiction. Some of the best novels feel painstakingly real. And what is true to you might not be to someone else."

"Exactly," I say, and we share a smile.

II.

"You're late."

"My bad."

I plop down on our bench—the one at Grant Park—in the space Nathan and Danny left open for me. Nathan passes me his smoldering cigarette, and I inhale, long and deep.

They've talked, I know now. To what extent, I don't. But it doesn't matter. It's their truth, not mine, and anyway, sometimes it's better not to know.

Nathan and I have never been good at pretending with each other. But, for Danny's sake, we try. Sitting with our backs to Lake Michigan, watching the sun sink behind the city, we play make-believe like we are perfectly normal teenagers with perfectly normal lives playing our perfectly normal favorite game—drafting unbeknownst strangers for our hypothetical zombie apocalypse teams.

"Your team," Nathan says, eyes narrowed on a tourist trying to orient himself and his map.

"Fine," Danny says, "But you get her," and gestures to an elderly woman feeding breadcrumbs to birds.

"Oh, fuck no. She's Baby's team. No doubt," he says, and tosses me a scheming smile.

"What happens if the world ends while I'm gone?" I ask.

"We'll come find you," says Nathan confidently.

"How?"

 _"_ Whaddya mean, _'How?'_ Danny's got a great navigator," he jerks his chin to the man with the map, struggling to find which direction he's already facing.

Even Danny chuckles. Asks, "What time are you leaving tomorrow?"

I shrug. "Whenever we can get the kid in the car."

He nods slowly, and we begin to slip away from playing pretend. "Let me know… y'know, if they say anything."

Nathan turns to me, eyes earnest in that _me, too_ look of his.

Here's the thing about Danny Reis: As much as he wants to distance himself from everything that has happened to him, wants to be skeptical of anything that could potentially push him outside of his own ideal, his curiosity gets the best of him sometimes. And that's the part of him that's still six-years-old. Always will be.

"I doubt they will," I say instead of _sure_.

After everything, I needed space to figure things out. To decide if I really believed all my brother had laid out before me. And while the jury's still out, he's been doing a good job of letting me have it.

"It's a long drive," Danny says simply, knowing what I mean anyway. Because if shit ever really hit the fan, we three already know the only "team" we're part of is with each other.

I nod shortly and we leave it at that. Make the most of the evening until it is time for us to go. Until Danny squeezes my shoulders and tells me to take care like he means it. Until Nathan hugs me goodbye, and although it won't be for long, the volumes and volumes we have written between ourselves over the past couple months weigh down on us still, tighten the air in our chests.

"See ya, Baby Spice," he says.

"In another life," I say, and mock his salute if only to make us laugh.

Because this is what it means to get by. To distance ourselves from the past, pretend we're normal friends who do normal things until we actually are. Not for the sake of forgetting, but for the sake of knowing again what it is to feel fully present in our own lives.

Someday, I know, we won't have to work at it so hard.

III.

Two weeks. That's what I get. What we agreed on—Ted and Karen and me. One in August, sleeping on Ted's pullout couch, and one right after school gets out, in my own bed at home.

 _Home._ I've been calling it that my whole life, the house I shared with my mother at the end of Maple Street. Only it looms like a stranger over me now as I stand in its humble driveway.

But a house is still a home until a new one is built, and my nine-year-old self forever belongs in Hawkins.

Ted helps with my bag and Karen greets Charlie and Jane and Michael me, in that order. Her arms are stiff around my shoulders and her blouse reeks of menthol masked by Chanel No.5, a gift from some faceless boyfriend two or three Christmases ago.

My parents have decided to set aside their differences through the next hour or two for the sake of soaking up as much time as they can get with their granddaughter. We'd all promised each other a civilized lunch, which turns out to mean damn near as much silence as the car ride down.

After I've resorted to shuffling diced carrots around my plate, Ted clears his throat. "How's the new school, Holly?"

"Fine."

"Still running track?"

"Coach wants me on the basketball team in the fall," I divert as a noncommittal matter-of-fact, but my father runs with it like a promise.

He smiles his rare Proud Dad smile, the one that twinkles behind his eyes. I'd forgotten what it looks like. "That's my girl! A real sport."

"Is track not a real sport?" Michael murmurs almost to himself. Almost.

Ted's expression flashes bitter.

The legs of Jane's chair scrape back against the hardwood.

"More wine?" she reaches for Karen's near-empty glass.

"Thank you, Jane."

Jane smiles kindly and disappears into the kitchen.

"How's your boyfriend taking this whole thing?" Asks Ted, attention back to me.

"Ryan's fine. We're still together."

I haven't seen him for a month. Not since he and Summer had to leave the day after my conversation with Michael.

There is still a lot he doesn't know. A lot I don't how the hell I'll ever tell him. But he is patient in a way I know I'll never be, and still calls regularly, and made plans for us to celebrate his graduation tonight. Along with plans for the rest of the week I'm here.

 _"Well, not the_ whole _week,"_ he had told me. _"Summer threatened to sue for joint custody."_

"Good. Good kid." Ted nods in agreement with himself. "Good family."

Karen hums her concurrence if only to fill the silence, to make an effort.

"Yes," I say to my father, but can't help a sidelong glance Michael's way. "Big family, too."

"You know, Richard Frazier's company tore down that old house on Pine Street," says Ted, to everyone and no one in particular. "It'll be interesting to see what they do with the land."

"They remodeled Marcia Dolgan's last fall," Karen says with a smile to me and Michael. And to Jane, too, as she returns from the kitchen and hands Karen a fresh glass. A smile that says, _See? I know my lines. I can play nice._

"Marcia… Marcia…" Ted racks his brain. "Which one is that?"

"You know Marcia, Ted."

"Marcia Dolgan!" Jane epiphanies, setting herself back down at the table. "She has—what?—seven dogs or something. We used to get noise complaints at the station all the time."

Karen absolutely beams like this is all going swimmingly for her now.

The oven dings. Karen flies from her seat. "That'd be the cookies. Who wants one?"

"Me!" exclaims Charlie, little limbs flailing.

"Actually," Michael checks his watch, "we have to be at Will's."

Ted checks his own time, tosses down his napkin, and prepares to excuse himself, too, at a moment's notice.

"Already?" asks Karen, her expression impassible.

"You sure you don't mind watching Charlie?"

"Of course not," she smiles her best grandmotherly smile at the toddler.

Michael stands and Jane does, too. Karen retreats to attend the oven.

"You should come," Jane says to me, her hand on my arm.

I am about to say no, or _why the hell would I want to do that?_ Until I see the openness on my brother's face, the bare honesty, and recall the slight lith hope in Danny's voice when he said _, It's a long drive._ I am about to say no until I find myself nodding my head yes.

IV.

What once was Hawkins Lab towers at the end of a long and winding road. The guard manning the gate waves us through without question.

This, decidedly, is not the Byers'.

I lean forward in my seat. "Uh, I thought we were meeting Will..." _,_

"We _are_ meeting Will," Michael says simply.

But before I can retort, or scrunch my face, or decide how to feel, I see him there—Will—standing and talking in the parking lot with Chief Hopper and another older man I do not know.

Michael parks and jumps out to greet the men enthusiastically.

"What are we doing here?" I ask Jane. We both stare up at the building, all steel and concrete and anything but welcoming. It has been so long-abandoned, the kids of Hawkins High believe it to be haunted. "Hasn't this place been vacant for, like, years?"

"It's a surprise for everyone," she tells me, unbuckling. I follow her lead out.

The men all smile and greet Jane warmly, but eye me as I follow with varying levels of suspicion.

I overhear Will in a low voice to Michael, "She knows?"

"She figured it out."

"She _is_ a Wheeler," Hopper mumbles, stomps out his cigarette.

"I can hear you," I tell them.

The Chief claps me on the shoulder, introduces me to Dr. Owens before my brother has the chance.

Owens' grip is firm as he shakes my hand. "I help out your brother and his partners."

It takes damn near everything in me to not roll my eyes at _partners,_ like the same vein Michael spoke of Kali in.

"But mostly," he continues, "I help patients like Mr. Byers."

Will smiles sheepishly, though he is still attached to an oxygen tank. How much is he really helping? Or is what Will has one of those things that gets way worse before it can get any better?

"Should we take a look?" Michael adds, nodding toward the building.

"Lead the way," smiles Dr. Owens.

On the way to the door, Jane tries her best to bring me up to speed—something abought Michael having bought the place to continue his research and utilize some of the resources the old lab left behind. The whole building is being renovated because of it, and judging by the wonder in the crowd's eyes, the awe in the voices of Michael, Hopper, Will, Jane, and Owens, it looks like a totally different place.

If so, I wouldn't know. The laminate flooring seems shiny enough and everything reeks of fresh paint, but the hanging curtains of plastic marking off areas make it hard to get a good look at anything.

Still, Jane and the men are enraptured by it. Jane is smiling so wide tears well in her eyes and her father wraps an arm around her, murmurs something into her hair. Owens and Will begin to stray further ahead of the rest of us, anxious to see what else has been done.

Meanwhile, Michael guides us confidently through the corridors, posture tall, smile beaming, like the proud architect of his world.

This whole thing is so much bigger than I can ever know it to be. Danny warned me and Michael did, too. And it is obvious this part of it is a huge step for them. One that is out of my reach.

Yet, I find myself smiling along with them.

While the men continue to fawn over every last new detail of the medical wing, Jane leans over and whispers to me, "Can I show you something?" but in a way that feels important. A way that feels like I don't have much of a choice.

I follow her down a few halls and around a few corners and up a flight of stairs, through a plastic curtain and into a wing that hasn't yet been touched, let alone remodeled. It sits stagnant, a museum of what this place once was, as cold and concrete as the outside of the building. The kind of place kids could be convinced was haunted.

There is a door with a rainbow painted on the frame. She twists the knob and leads me inside. "This is where they kept us when we were young. While our powers were still developing. Before they could really start testing on us."

 _Powers._ Such a strange word to hear her say, but isn't that what they are? What else could explain what Charlie can do? _Powers._

I can't dwell on it, because once inside the room, it commands my full attention. It is a playroom with steel tables and concrete walls. Tile floors and few toys.

And it hits me dreadfully that this is where Charlie would be.

"They used to put me in here with Kali," Jane's voice is soft, right here yet so far away.

I try to picture with her—Kali in here, as a child. Wide-eyed, helpless, and trapped. But I can't.

In my mind, she always stares directly into my soul, dark eyes ablaze, smirk cunning and humorless.

I try and picture Jane in here, too. A test. A number. A human experiment. It's a little too much for me.

I distract myself from the idea with the drawing of crayon miraculously still taped to the wall. Something like Charlie would scribble. A portrait of a person that is merely a circle for a head with hair and a smile, two stick arms and two stick legs coming straight out from it. Underneath is a scrawl that looks something like _102._

"It's Danny's."

This is what Nathan meant when he said Danny was from Hawkins. His life before the Reis'. This is what Danny meant when he said he got out too young to feel a connection with the other numbers. It all comes back to this lab.

"He was the last," Jane nods. "But I don't think he was in here long. He developed very early. Like Charlie has been."

Right. More like Charlie, he had said. Not Jane. "Is that how he's different from you?"

Jane leans back against the steel table, watches me as I take in the room around us. She can't bring herself to face quite so many details. "My mother signed up to be part of some psychological experiment here in the '60s. They wanted to see if they could expand the boundaries of the human mind or something like that. At the time, that's mostly all this lab was. They brought in their subjects and tested them with LSD, electroshock, you name it. Thing is, people didn't understand genetics then nearly as much as they do now. They didn't realize expanding the mind meant mutating something in the genetic code. And Mama didn't realize she was pregnant. So, not only did it alter something in her—gave her a sixth sense almost—but it altered something in me, too. Same with the rest of my generation, the ones that come from those initial experiments. Only with us—"

"You have it stronger," I say, recalling Danny's words.

"Much stronger."

"You can find people?" Like Danny mentioned she found him.

"I can find people," she smiles. "I can do this…"

A discarded letter block on the floor lifts into the air, as if attached to an invisible string, and floats over into Jane's outstretched hand.

She sets it down on the table like it's nothing. Like she hasn't just defied every law of gravity.

Before I can ask her to show me again, she breezes on. "But Charlie, she's even stronger. She doesn't have to concentrate like I do. She just _does._ And right now all she's figured out is the lights, but what happens if there's more she can do and can't control?"

"And Danny's the same. That's why you want his help."

She shakes her head. "He's the same in the way that he's in the next generation, yes. His powers are even stronger, developed earlier. Like I said, he doesn't have to _try,_ he just _does._ But in a way, it's worse in him. More intense. He was _bred,_ not born. _Designed_ is the word they used. They wanted to see if when the genetics of people with two different abilities combined, they would create a certain outcome. If they could manipulate which powers Danny would get. I mean, can you imagine living with that?"

"That's…" I say, because there is no other way to put it, "fucked."

God knows I certainly wasn't made out love, either, but to no way this extent. To no way so medical or methodical. And, besides, I'd never been forced to feel that lack. My siblings, in their own way, loved me until they left. My parents loved me until Summer and Ryan came along and they didn't have to anymore. Even when I had to leave, Nathan hardly ever held a doubt for me during even my most batshit moments.

But Danny…

Who, in his whole life, has ever loved Daniel Reis? Fully and honestly. If he cannot even open up to his own brother, who has he had to share even the most shadowed part of himself with and be certain that he will be believed unconditionally? Who but him alone?

 _"You don't want anything else from me,"_ he explained to me the night of the show, the night he sort of let me in. Gave me a glimpse inside. I thought I understood then. Now, the memory stings.

With a life like that, I wouldn't trust a single soul, either.

Knowing it now makes me feel dirty. This is not my secret to bear.

"That's why we want to help him, too," continues Jane. "That's part of what Mike's working on. He's trying to pinpoint the gene, so he can stop it from being passed down if one of us doesn't want to. Or cure those of us who want to be cured, but it's a choice. We're giving everyone a choice."

It makes me think of those names up on that board, all those tests listed out after each one. _Pending_ after Danny's, like he still might decide to change his mind.

Maybe Michael really is simply searching for the truth.

"And I know Kali comes off strong," says Jane. "I've already told her to lay off off Danny, but _both_ of his biological parents had the gene. He could give Mike a lot of information, and Kali's hung up on that."

Kali seems to be hung up on a lot of things. But who am I to say I've never taken drastic measures to prove something important, to protect my own cause?

"We never should've lied to you, Holly, but there are things about what happened in this place that aren't safe—"

There's that word again. God, I fucking hate it. "That's what I don't get. This lab has been shut down for _years…"_

Jane nods. "That's what they're so upset about."

 _They,_ again. A looming entity in its own right. The one that truly haunts the place. Just how Danny spoke of them, the ones to wage a war against. How Michael spoke of them, the ones who created the chaos worth fighting for.

"But why? What really happened to this place?"

Jane smirks with nostalgia. "Nancy Wheeler happened. Jonathan Byers, too."

I scoff. _Nancy?_

"Seriously, Hols. They're the ones that came up with the whole story about a gas leak."

Another piece slides into place, and the picture takes the shape of this lab. Again, it all comes back to here. All of it. "The one that killed Barbara Holland."

Jane nods.

"So what was it really, then?"

She hesitates. Considers her next words. Her face flashes, testing out a few different expressions.

I cross my arms. "Don't lie to me."

"I won't. I don't want to. It's just hard to explain…"

"Is it what killed Bob Newby? And Connie Frazier?"

Her eyebrows scrunch together, pained. "Bob, yes. And what made Will sick. And Frazier…" she sighs deep and wide.

They are hard words for her to get out. I can sense she is on the verge of tears, but I can't bring myself to stop her. I am so, so close suddenly it doesn't matter that it's none of my business. I have come so far to make it here. I need to know.

"It was me. I opened something… This gate. And it let so much darkness in."

The gate. The one Michael told me about, which takes tons and tons of energy to open. Lets things pass between two different dimensions.

But what Jane is saying can't be true. The Jane Wheeler I know is lovely and collected and practiced. Sure, she can find people. She can make a block float across a room. But the Jane Wheeler I know doesn't open a direct door to hell with only her mind.

Not unless, maybe, she was under the duress of this prison of a place. In which case, she shouldn't have to walk her whole life carrying this guilt inside her, but clearly, she does. She does.

The part of her that is still twelve-years-old will forever be stuck here.

"I closed it, eventually, but it was too late for a lot of people."

"Too late for Will?" Had our monster crawled in and made him sick somehow? The kind that never gets better?

She shakes her head vehemently. "I hope not. He's been working with Owens and Mike, but even they don't know as much as they'd like. He spent a long time lost in the Upside Down—the other world. Who knows what could've happened?"

"What about you? Is it too late to save yourself?"

She shrugs, dejected. "I think the bad men would be watching us either way. And I doubt it's about the gate as much as Mike thinks it is. They're more upset that, after everything, all their numbers got away. I don't think they ever fully got what they were looking for from us, and now that Mike and Kali are learning more and more..." she trails off, loses herself in her own thought. "It feels like living in a Cold War. We've been learning to keep out of each other's way, as long as everyone keeps quiet."

"But if the gate had never been opened," I say, "if Barbara Holland never died, then all of you would still be trapped here."

She never would have met Michael, had Charlie, known me. She never would have taught me to put on makeup, taken me shopping on the weekends, convinced me to try out for track. She never would have been there babysitting me with Michael on Friday nights, or letting me practice braids on her curls, or watching chick-flicks with me no one else could seem to stomach. And I never would have known what it means to have a sister.

If the gate had never opened, if Barbara Holland never died, who would we be?

"Maybe," considers Jane. "Or maybe we would've all found our own ways out, anyway. Kali did."

"She did?" I'm not surprised. If anyone could, it'd be her.

"She's been seeking some sort of revenge ever since."

The kill list. Suddenly, it makes sense. The file wasn't random, it was to keep track of those who are no longer a threat.

Connie Frazier was one of _them._ My head draws back in surprise. It is another thing to file away and process later, retrace my steps and figure out how the fuck I missed that. For what it could mean for Ryan's general safety. But for now, we're on Kali, and I am all for taking the chances I can get.

"And how, exactly, is she doing that?" I ask, trying to keep my voice level.

"Now? It's all this," she says simply, skimming over Kali's likely murderous past, gesturing widely, not to the room but to encompass the entire building. "It's Newby."

When it's all put in perspective like this, it's clever enough to make me smirk. Even though my own stupidity.

Yes, Michael is testing on people. Yes, his house, his company, and God knows what else are all in Bob Newby's name. Because yes, this was their prison, Jane and Kali and however many others. Only now, they are overtaking it. Making it something better, something light, something they believe in.

None of it was ever meant for hiding in plain sight. It is all a message to _them,_ however close they may be, that there is no use in dwelling in the past. Jane and Kali, Danny and Charlie, and any others like them cannot be touched anymore. They are much more powerful than any dream or design, and they will always be one step ahead. Always.

V.

I could say I'm a big believer in happy endings, but that would be a lie.

However, there are, I admit, certain places where life pauses. Where one composition book overflows into the next, were lungs and legs overtake thought mid-sprint, where the match still glows orange embers seconds after the flame flickers out. And sometimes, these places are enough.

We make our way back through the halls, Jane and me, the oldest we have ever felt. When we find the group again, Nancy's addition takes me by surprise.

She's joined by both Jonathan, snapping photos of the remodel, and Kali, a gleam of awe in her critical eyes.

Jonathan tells my brother that Bob would be proud. Everyone agrees, continues to fawn over how different everything looks.

And Nancy looks different, too. She wears her hair slicked back in a low knot and her lips painted brick red. Her heels clack intelligently against the new flooring and her stomach is halfway swollen.

No one told me she'd be here, not that I should've suspected anything different.

And judging by the look on her face when she sees me, no one told her about me, either.

"Holly," she says before she can attempt to arrange herself.

"Hi."

She steals a skeptical glance at Michael, who in turn watches his wife.

"Isn't it nice?" asks Jane, deflecting like we Wheelers do, looking up and around, easing the settling tension.

"Very impressive," says Kali. She wills a smile at me, and I return the favor.

Maybe someday, after we find much, much more stable common ground, it will feel natural.

The truth, I am sure, we will all get to later. But sometimes the truth is hard to swallow. Sometimes, for the moment, this feels safer.

Will mentions he'd love to see what they've done with the third floor and Owens concurs. Michael motions for them to lead the way.

"It's good to see you, Holly," Nancy assures, falling into stride beside me. Her eyes are wide and clear and honest, the same color as mine.

"You, too."

"Do you remember," Michael beings, matching our pace, and his face tries very hard not to look concerned, "the last time we were all together?"

Nancy frowns, and for a moment she looks just like our mother. I can tell she can't remember, and I can tell not even Michael knows his own answer, and maybe it's supposed to sting, but maybe it doesn't matter as much as it does that we are all here now, included and back in Hawkins.

And for a minute, life pauses.

"You both came home for Christmas my freshman year," I say, and they both grin.

"Oh, yeah! Didn't Dad show up for that, too?" asks Mike.

"Only because Chris was there," I say. It was his first Christmas that year, my nephew.

"And Mom thew a fit because Baby Holly forgot to thaw the ham," Nancy says, and we lock eyes, begin laughing about it together.

Michael tosses an arm across my shoulders and squeezes tight and I can feel it then; all the intentions he's had to protect me, whether it be from bad men or our own family, regardless of what is right or wrong or honest. All these years, my big brother. Nancy reaches up to rumple his hair and he swats her away.

If there is one thing I feel I can be sure of in this moment, it is this:

We three, no matter time or distance or secrets, are Wheelers.

We do not have to be a family burning to the ground.

We are Wheelers, and we can resurrect ourselves in stone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: I feel like I don't know what to say other than thank you. Thank you, thank you, thank you! I feel like I've been working on this story forever. For a long time, seventeen-year-old Holly felt like an imaginary friend to me, and one I wasn't sure anyone else would ever meet because I genuinely didn't think anyone would be interested in the concept. My earliest Google doc draft for this story dates back to March of 2018 and, my God, has so much changed since then. Brilliant Lies is one of the longest, most difficult things I have ever written, but it has been by far the most rewarding process for me, one that pains me to say goodbye to. For that, I cannot thank you enough, because if it weren't for all of you I am certain this never would have been finished and Holly, Nathan, Ryan, and Summer would all still be just imaginary friends to me.
> 
> This is the part where I'm supposed to plug my new, upcoming fic, but to be honest, I'm back in that same boat of not being positive it'll ever see the light of day for no reason other than my own crippling self-doubt. But who knows? Winter break is coming up so I might just bang out something short. Stay tuned, friends.

**Author's Note:**

> I don’t have a beta/proofreader so please don’t mind any mistakes I may have missed!
> 
> Thank you guys so much for all the love I have received on this story. I truly didn't expect as positive of a reaction I've been getting, but you have all proved me wrong. I couldn't ask for better readers. xx


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